Post Christmas Musings

Sometimes random thoughts just pop up as if out of the blue.  It is a mental phenomena not always understood.  As I listened to some unwanted Christmas music on the car radio back in the early days of Advent, I found myself making some comparisons between Christmas and Easter.  As we all know, Easter is the chief celebration day on the Christian calendar.  If such celebrations were given a numerical value, Easter would be number one.  As the Apostle Paul reminds us, throw away the resurrection and the gospel is an empty thing.   After putting Easter firmly on the top of the totem poll, I would place Good Friday and the crucifixion just below it.  And then, Christmas would show up as a number three.

 

But, have you ever noticed that there is far more Christmas music than Easter music.  Check out that church hymnal.  Listen to the Christian radio stations announcing that Christmas music will begin on December I and imagine the same thing happening three weeks before Easter.  Not a chance!  By the time we get to Christmas, we are worn out, wishing it was over, but with Easter, there is truly holy space to anticipate it and then to relish the joy of the moment.  It is not just the secular community which does such a number on Christmas that its arrival is greeted more with relief than joy for the sacred community jumps on board that ship as well.  The church just cannot seem to do the waiting of Advent and chooses instead to jump pre-maturely into the celebration of Christmas.

So, what change do I think might come as a result of this post Christmas musing?  Actually, none.  Any hope of change on the part of the church seems impossible to consider given the way the church of our day seems so willing to take its marching orders from the secular community around it.    Common consensus gives legitimacy to all sorts of stuff which the written Word of scripture would never do.  Who knows?  Maybe, this is more lament than musing.  Or, maybe it is just regret that the secular society around the sacred community of the church is not being shaped and influenced by the powerful message given by the Holy Spirit to the church brought into being by the Christ.