Dear Friends in Christ,
I love Christmas. I love the full twelve days of Christmas, beginning on December 25th. I lean into the season with cookie creations, tree popcorn decorations, candles strewn across my home, and King’s College Christmas Lessons & Carols streaming in the background.
However, sometimes I feel like a grinch during this time of the year . . . at least my family has called me that in recent days. My mother began playing Christmas carols as soon as the turkey went in the oven on Thanksgiving Day. I was aghast! My jaw dropped with an immediate palm to the face. This priest with liturgical sensibilities was more than judgy of my mom’s timing.
I am not ready for Christmas. I am not ready to hear the angel’s news of great joy. I am not ready to hang out with the shepherds and the barn yard animals in Bethlehem. I am not ready to hear the coos or cries of a newborn baby Jesus. I simply am not ready.
Personally, I need the season of Advent leading up to the feast of the Nativity, which begins this Sunday. I need a season of waiting. A season where I practice the spiritual disciplines of hope, peace, joy, and love (which our Advent wreath candles represent). That sense of expectation slowly building in my life. I want to spend time with pregnant Mary as she considers the birth of this unplanned calling. Time to reorient myself to take stock of what it means, that our God took on human flesh and came to earth in the form of a baby lying in a manger. I need space to consider how I have been experiencing Christ, not just in one moment two thousand years ago, but how Christ shows up in the face of everyone I encounter. When God took on humanity, God anointed all of creation with divinity. I need time, space, and the season to slow down so I can see God show up and witness all the ways God is already present in my life.
So, if you’re not ready for Christmas, well my friends, you’re not alone. You have a whole global community of Christians to wait with you. I invite us all to carve out the time and space this season to wait together. This does not mean you have to stop listening to Christmas music, or you can’t put up the tree and the lights. Please gather for parties and wear that ugly sweater that you pull out during this time of the year. Bake those holiday cookies and revel in the beauty of it all.
I also invite us to consider how we are carving out the time and space this season to welcome the Christ child on Christmas Eve. How might you gift yourself the opportunity to slow down and breathe during the hustle and bustle of our current cultural context?
Maybe it looks like any of the following: Advent Wreath Making this Sunday morning, lighting the candles at dinner each night, and marking out the weeks one-by-one; a mini retreat, or celebrating our sister, Mother Mary, at MaryPalooza; the sound of the angels at our choir’s offerings of Handel’s Messiah and Lessons & Carols; carving out a moment every day to reflect on and post #adventword; listening to a few Advent carols along with the Christmas ones, (I even made an eclectic playlist if you need a place to start); 😉 or, it could mean taking a walk in the woods, around the churchyard, through your garden, and discerning how all of creation is turning inward this time of year.
With all these wonderful ways to slow down, take stock and wait in hopeful expectation for the coming of the Christ child, who even knows what might happen? As that childhood tale articulates, “And what happened, then? Well, in Whoville they say – that the Grinch’s small heart grew three sizes that day.”
May all our hearts grow three sizes this holiday season as we slow down, take stock, and wait together.
Advent blessings,
Sarah+
The Rev. Sarah Dunn
Associate Rector