The decorations are out, and the annual cursing of the Christmas lights has begun. On Monday my wife said, “I think we should get our tree this weekend,” and my anxiety about untangling lights has been growing all week.
No other holiday can elicit such intense emotions as Christmas. Whether it’s high joy or empty sadness, the period between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day can be hard on a soul. There is a high cultural expectation for families to have a “Hallmark Holiday,” a kind of pressure that can be enough to make the season ring more hollow than holy. A strong dose of the theology of Advent would serve us all well as we try to dodge the “Hollow Daze” and make space for the “Holy Days.”
One of the ways you can move from Hollow Daze to Holy Days is observe traditions with your church family. This Sunday marks the first day of the Christian calendar, on it we mark the first Sunday of Advent, a season of preparation celebrating the birth of Jesus. Among others traditions, we at Willow Meadows Baptist Church will hang our Christmon ornaments, hand made and maintained by the women of our church over the last thirty years.
The ornaments aren’t fancy. There have no “chasing lights” and they don’t move like some automated reindeer grazing in your front yard. With simplicity and beauty each of these hand sewn ornaments point to the Christ of Christmas while adorning the tree in our sanctuary. But they tell another story, too. They tell the stories of our spiritual mothers and sisters.
A cross – what story of trust lies behind the eyes of the one who sewed that one?
A dove – what strength was in the hands of the one who cut this one from the cloth?
An angel – what grace event brought healing to the one who stitched a sequin of repair on a broken wing?
This Sunday we’ll all remember the dear saints who made them - some gone on to glory, some still with us - and remembering them, we’ll also remember their faith. Across time they are handing us a cup of tradition filled with the spirit of Advent. Drink deeply from this cup and you will find that your hollow daze become holy days.
I pray that you, too, will be able observe traditions of significance this season and find richness in faith, not just richness in stuff. This Sunday I’ll be preaching a sermon about this very thing, assuming I can untangle myself from the Christmas tree lights. I’ll start with Jeremiah 33.14-16 to examine how the incarnation – God becoming human in the person of Jesus – changed everything then and can change everything for you now. I hope you can join us in the flesh as we gather for worship at 10:30am.
Jeremiah 33.14-16, New International Version
14 " 'The days are coming,' declares the LORD, 'when I will fulfill the gracious promise I made to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah.
15 " 'In those days and at that time I will make a righteous Branch sprout from David's line; he will do what is just and right in the land.
16 In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. This is the name by which it will be called: The LORD Our Righteousness.'
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