Thoughts

The Sundays between the celebration of Christmas and the day of Epiphany have always seemed to be an awkward moment for the church.   In actuality the season of Christmas begins on Christmas Day and continues until that day of remembering the journey of the wise men from the east.  The problem for the church and its people is that all the Christmas energy is spent before Christmas arrives.  Unlike Easter when no self respecting church person would sing Easter songs until Easter Sunday, by the first Sunday of Christmas which is the Sunday after Christmas Day all the Christmas hymns have been sung to the point of exhaustion.      

Not only is the church worn out with the Christmas music, but many preachers have put Jesus in the manger several times in sermons.  So, as Christmas Day passes and the season marked Christmas begins, no one knows exactly what to do.  Strangely enough a Christmas sermon seems out of place and everyone feels strange if a Christmas hymn is announced as one to sing.  Instead of focusing on the message the Christian calendar is proclaiming, the church is mostly ready to move on to whatever is next.    

Suggesting that all this could be avoided by observing Advent might be relevant, but no one really wants to do this when the world is declaring the December days of Advent to be the Christmas season.  Maybe it is just one of those problems which cannot be fixed.  Of course, it is not really a problem for ninety-nine out of one hundred people who enter the doors of the church.  Perhaps, the only reasonable thing to do is to continue with the awkwardness of a season that is a season in name only.  Maybe the important thing is that Christmas is celebrated to the point of being worn out with it.  Few of us really give it any thought as we wait for the day of the arrival of the wise men even though the great majority of us figure there is no need to wait as they have already arrived.