Evolving Advent

Advent has had a varied history. Sometimes in some places it's been a 40 day preparation season a bit like Lent. Sometimes it's been about a week. At some point it started to be thought of as the Church's new year. At some point it gained in the West the form of a 4 Sundays before Christmas season of preparation -with the penitential feel that tended to go along with Lent. The idea was that Christmas began on the night before Christmas day. I won't go into the details, there's Wikipedia for that!
However, it seems to me that it is difficult for the season to be kept in that way in the contemporary west without is being seen as killjoys and legalists. This is because in the popular psyche, Christmas begins before 25 December -which is felt to be the culmination of the feast. As a child, I can remember thinking that the 12 days of Christmas were the previous 12 days not the following ones. That was logical: you'd end up on the most important day with the most gifts!

So, as I have written before, I think we should re-configure how we approach (metaphorically and chronologically) Christmas. Now might be a time to start sketching out ideas as we go through things this year with a view to beginning to change things next time around

Suggestion the first. Let's start the preparation sooner. I'd suggest after remembrance tide; so about two weeks into November -this would roughly coincide with a Celtic Advent which was 40 days prior to the Nativity. However, I'd suggest that the preparation season be staged and take account of the new Kingdom season -which is essentially November, ending with the final Sunday of November (Christ the King). I'd suggest that from mid November to mid December a time of relative fasting be considered -perhaps in the style of Muslim Ramadan where some feasting is woven in and then a couple of weeks before Christmas this would ease off.

Suggestion the second. Some marking and staging of the preparatory weeks: Lets have an Advent wreath of seven or eight candles, each to be lit on each Sunday progressively (there are those menorah-like candle-stands from Scandinavia, perhaps, to draft into service, eh?). And this might enable us to fix a current problem with the four/five Advent candles thing: the 'traditional' themes of the candles don't fit the lectionary readings for their respective Sundays. So we could do with a rethink of that, probably by tying in the candles to the respective Sunday themes -and writing prayers and little songs to fit that. For much of the Church of England this candle-lighting stuff is only about a generation old anyway: it hardly counts as hoary tradition, in reality and we have no canonical oughtage driving this: it's purely churches liking to 'beef up' the seasonality (perhaps responding to the Advent calendar's popularity). So let's take back control from unthinking antiquarianism and make the nice little liturgical additions serve well rather than pulling in another direction.

Suggestion the third. Liturgical colours. Let's face it, the use of red for Kingdomtide is more about differentiating from Advent which was using purple when in fact Kingdomtide's themes would more naturally lend themselves to purple (or black even). So how about, by recognising the increasingly 'feasty' nature of things as December progresses, we perhaps started to use red in Advent, or perhaps the last couple of weeks before Christmas day? That would free us up to use purple in November. Maybe we might even stage things like this: black for the first couple of weeks of November; purple next and finally in the last run up to Christmas, red. Perhaps we might fancy returning to using blue like used to happen before Roman canonical conformity interfered: Black>blue>purple (imperial colour for Christ the King?)>red. Maybe we could colour our candles accordingly?

Yule be sorry

I've spent a number of years in the past encouraging congregations not to get too Christmassy too early. Partly it began because I got fed up with people wingeing that Christmas began too early but then not doing anything about trying to resist involvement themselves. In addition it did seem to me that the festival was meant to be a 12 day thing and we tend to try to cram all the best stuff into 25th December, so part of what I tried to encourage us to do was to recover a 12-day Christmas. I say this by way of demonstrating my bona-fides as one of those who really rather dislikes the invasion of Advent by Christmas and the loss of a 12-day feast. That said, I found this really disturbing: it's an incident of a shop selling Christmas cards in August being threatened for doing so ...

"The Mind branch was also phoned by a man who claimed to have carried out the attack, saying that it would happen again if cards continued to be sold 'far too early'. But the charities involved said that agreeing to the demand would lose them regular income. The brief notes, all delivered by hand, say: 'This is a very polite but very serious reminder not to display Xmas cards until 1st Nov. We will put super glue into your locks if you do. Peace and goodwill.''"

Now I'd rather not see the full-scale shop consumer fest anticipating Christmas get underway in August either. I think that the more we Yulify early, the more we are acclimating ourselves to the festival and so losing a sense of its specialness. The point of a festival in part is that it should be different to the everyday: by festooning our shops with the trimmings we are turning it into everyday winter 'dress' rather than something special.

But the solution is very far from threatening charity shops for selling Christmas cards. I'd actually be happy to buy Christmas cards in August, and I think that people should be free to do so. What I want is for retailers not to go into full swing too early, and I'd rather discourage them by not buying and staying away. The language that retailers understand is, ultimately, sales. This guy's threats really are a very bad way to go about it much though I think I may understand his being fed-up.

However, I have recently been rethinking and feeling that we need to recognise that perhaps we may have to compromise somewhat with the secular thing, so my newer suggestions are here.
Yule be sorry: threat to August sellers of Xmas cards | Life and style | The Guardian:

The honest truth about Christmas card sending

Dave Walker anatomises the dilemmas of Christmas card sending very neatly in his latest cartoon:
Cutting down the Christmas card list

Charity Christmas gifts online

And this isn't just buying a physical present for someone that is fairtraide, say. Rather this is not buying something that you send to a friend or family member, rather you buy something for someone in the developing world, to help lift them out of poverty, and your would-be-donee gets a card to say what has been given on their behalf, so to speak. A few years back, I got a card with 10 chickens on it as 'my' present was 10 chickens to a family in east Africa. I really liked that -after all, like most people in the west, I actually have my fill of little ornaments and fripperies. What do you get for the person who has, well, if not everything, at least most things that they could need and many they could want? Something for someone else who doesn't have much. This is much more in the spirit of Saint Nicholas, methinks. Anyway, there's a good explanation here: Charity Christmas gifts online are perfect solution for Christmas shoppers | Ekklesia: "Instead of simply giving more unwanted clutter to friends and family, the Christian aid agencies have come up with a range of 70 charity Christmas gifts which you can give to developing communities - on behalf of others.
From an ox to an HIV education system, a wheelchair to a bicycle, you can order and send your charity Christmas gifts all online too. All you have to do is visit the web site, choose a price range and select a gift with the details of the friend on whose behalf you are sending the present. The charity then sends a special card to your friend or family member, telling them what has been given on their behalf."
And at that site links to three charity sites where they are doing this.

One note of caution though. Don't do this to someone else unless they are happy about it, or you could lose a friend. Better is to let people know that this is what you'd like for Christmas, and hope that some of them might take the hint. And remember, it doesn't have to be either/or: you could elect for a little gift and ask for the rest to be a charity gift.

Rethinking Christmas NOW!

From Make Wealth History comes this suggestion that I have often thought, and sometimes actioned or commended to others: Rethinking Christmas: "if you long for a simpler, more human Christmas, now is the time to start planning it. You’ve got a blank slate for 2008, and if you wait until the pressure hits in October or November, it’s too late. If you want to talk to your family about it, and have a bit of a discussion, now might be a good time to make some suggestions. You can talk again in the summer and decide for sure whether you want to go for it, but get the ball rolling early."

I'm thinking of setting it for myself as a Lent project; perhaps even blog about it ...