First — hello — Advent is not Christmas:
There’s a segment of evangelicalism that’s increasingly drawn to liturgy, especially the Anglican tradition, said Larry Eskridge, associate director of the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals at Wheaton College. But he thinks that’s a part of the Advent boom. “There’s also undoubtedly a commercial element as well,” he said. “As the popularity of the practice grew among an influential segment of the evangelical community, that popularity was cashed in by the Christian publishing, manufacturing, and retailing industries. The visibility of Advent wreaths, candles, banners, books, tracts, etc., undoubtedly had a major impact on a lot of folks’ awareness, tolerance, and embrace of the practice.”
I see the modern adaptation of Advent as a wonderful entry point to the riches of ancient Christian tradition: the church year, sacraments, and liturgy. Indeed, I’m one of those new Anglicans Eskridge refers to—but I got there via a hip Baptist church that introduced me to the seasons of the church year (and cofounded Advent Conspiracy).
But sometimes I find myself befuddled by a particularity of this movement. As a season of the church year, Advent is intended to prepare us for Christmas—a 12-day celebration, a season in itself. Advent is traditionally the fast before the feast. But I see few recent adopters of Advent keeping the feast. Thirty days of waiting, anticipation, preparation—and then when the person on whom you’ve waited arrives, Alright, we’re done here. Pack up the Christmas tree. What are you doing New Year’s Eve?
Fast between Thanksgiving and Christmas? You have to be kidding.
But if you can mix politics into whether or not to observe the Christ Mass, you might be on to something:
. . . when we look to the seventeenth century, we see some evidence of the Kirk making progress in convincing even lay persons that celebrating Christmas really was naughty. One significant factor working in the Kirk’s favor was, somewhat ironically, King James’s new-found conviction that Scottish Christians really should celebrate Christmas. James put significant pressure on the General Assembly of the Kirk meeting in Perth in 1618 to adopt, among a variety of liturgical/practical reforms, a religious calendar consisting of at least a handful of religious days, one of which was Christmas. For James, getting the Scots to celebrate Christmas was one small step towards creating uniformity of religious practice in his lands, which as of 1603 had come to include England. In any case, so far as the common people and their proclivity to celebrate Christmas went, it turned out that telling them they must celebrate Christmas was the surest way to keep some of them at least from doing so.
But if you are a neo-Calvinist, it’s easy peasy:
But let’s think about this for a second. As Abraham Kuyper said, “There is not one square inch of the entire creation about which Jesus Christ does not cry out, ‘This is mine! This belongs to me!’” That includes Christmas. It is, and always will be, his. It is as possible to remove Jesus from Christmas as it is to remove him from the church.
You left out the best part:
King: Farts on you and the session of your Kirk both! When I was in Scotland I kept Yule and Pasch in spite of all your hearts…. You are recusants, that will not come to the Kirk on holy days to hear preachings.
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If you don’t do Lent or a 12 Day Christmas, your Advent rings hollow.
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The service before opening presents is a good way to inflict unresolved anger on your kids happiness.
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If you don’t do Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost…but do observe Advent, your church might not be using the lectionary. The yearly cycle turns on the Sunday readings, and a myriad of seasonal hymns were written with those readings in mind.
I’m fine with Christians declining to observe certain days, a la Romans 14, but picking and choosing is weird. (And that includes Protestants only acknowledging Easter and Christmas because they are culturally popular.)
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Katy nailed it down hard. They’re called e-e-evangelicals. They love to hear scripture readings from the Gospel of John and nod in approval toward the weekly lighting of Advent candles, though never, never hold a special mid-week service dedicated to such. And at the massive December 24th blow-out where exceptional choirs in larger congregations process down the aisles in special robes and collars and candles are handed out at the door for ignition toward the end of the service. But right after that, it’s the routine humdrum of weekly exposition of the designated NT book of choice again (unless the senior pastor decided to sneak out for his own personal yule tide vacation).
Oh, and Easter – yassum! There we’re entertained by little girls parading down the aisles dressed in white, trailing streamers of similar cloth and color, to be closely followed by processing choirs. And at the end of the service all entertain ALL with tone deaf congregants trying hard to keep up with the choir in the singing of multiple choruses of Handel’s Messiah (first time since Christmas, anyway)!
But woe to you who might suggest a special Sunday dedicated to Epiphany, or the Ascension, or Pentecos, or the likest! Those are for the papists and not for us e-e-evangelicals. And Reformation Sunday? Whass Dat? We’ve all heard of that Luther fellow and hear frequent quotes from his works by the preacher, but a special Sunday for the reformation? May it never be (well, we might get to sing “A Mighty Fortress”, but that’s about the extent of it).
And BTW, that poor little OPC church down the road, they just don’t know how to celebrate Christmas and Easter with joy and exuberance…such a pity.
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Can someone please suggest a decent book that might sum up why my WELS parents should leave their left-over Romish trappings in favor of the poor little (truly) Reformed church? And don’t say the Bible as I don’t think they read it much (or even little). Not that they’d ever leave the church they’ve belonged to over 60 years.
We sang A Mighty Fortress every Sunday – 1st song EVERY Sunday. Ya, that calendar was complicated – especially with a large WELS grade school that it was with.
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Matt, not a lot of Calls to Communion from Reformed to Lutheran, unless you want to look at the Bayly Bros which R-rated.
What about Mike Horton? It would have to be indirect.
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Thanks for the Horton Calvin book link, Dr. Hart.
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Just give me a Sunday worship service indistinguishable from the other 51 worship services of the year, and do whatever you please on Christmas Eve or Day (unless it falls on Sunday).
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I’m with mboss, but I do welcome the chance to get together with both sides of the family on Thanksgiving & Christmas. Never look down your nose at a paid holiday, I say.
Defeated my brother in Trivial Pursuit (a 2005 Pop Culture Edition). He missed two game winners where the answer was “Kenny G.”. Hilarious. Everyone but my dad, brother, and me bailed out once most of the questions proved to be next to impossible to answer.
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Following the Calendar becomes especially tricky when you add Darwin to apostolic succession:
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Can we celebrate now?
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I sympathize with you in your dealings with Jason and the Callers, but it begins to get tedious when you mock even the basically sane thoughts of Chesterton as presented therein by Mr. Ahlquist.
We get it, everything about Catholicism is wrong and crappy.
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Josh, head back to a few threads back, If it could happen to Jerusalem, DGH reads:
Don’t mind me, however. I’m just bores, reading reddit and OL threads, but it appears both me and my 8 year old daughter were wrong. It’s Ca-tawn.
Toodles.
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Josh, but Chesterton was fat.
To be clear, not everything about Rome is “crappy.” What kind of vulgarian would say that? It’s just that Jason and the Callers and all the apologists (which are legion) never mention the less than savory bits.
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Boy, is it complicated:
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The RCC has provided us with many brilliant minds to instruct in general revelation.
Far far fewer in special revelation. It is the height of kindness in here to admit that any have.
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No, Josh, it’s just that crap is so bad, it overwhelms whatever vestiges of the genuine Christian religion that are still found in Romanism.
Consider the abominable idolatry of the mass. Not only is the host worshipped as God, the “sacrifice” of it by the judaizing/pseudo Aaronic Roman priesthood is needed to supplement what Christ accomplished “once for all” on the cross at Calvary. (Golgotha, we are told by the minions of the little papa, only takes care of original sin.)
IOW it’s pretty hard to come up with something like the mass, that in the name of Christ contradicts Christ so egregiously. But never fear. That masterpiece of Satan, Rome is up to the task.
Then again, Jesus told his disciples that there would be those who would kill them in the name of God Jn. 16:2. So too those who come as angels of light and butcher the gospel. Rome has few peers in that regard.
Likewise, Bryan’s version of charity notwithstanding, Christ had his most severe words for the Pharisees and hypocrites; those who might honor him in form, but not in substance; by mouth, but not from the heart or in reality. Any guess who that might be today?
Evolution? Rome hates competition. Newman, a contemporary of Darwin, didn’t call it the doctrine of development for nothing.
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Darryl:
To be honest, Calvin was one, as he described the relationship of “the papacy” to “the Church”:
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Now I get it. Four weeks of fasting and twelves days of consumption:
Given the significance of the resurrection, why not 28 days of Easter?
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Given the significance of the resurrection, why not 28 days of Easter?
Easter is actually an eight-week season (between Easter and the feast of the Ascension).
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On December 30, 2014 at 8:17 am, John Bugay miscounted:
Is the purported “eight-week season” an example of Reformed Presbyterian counting? Or are readers seeing a negative impact of modern U.S. educational dogma, according to which, traditional memorization of the times tables (even for single-digit factors) is a cruel suppression of a child’s creativity?
The Feast of the Ascension is one of the very rare feasts of Our Lord whose date is documented in the New Testament (Acts 1:3), as the conclusion of 40 days after His Resurrection, thus 5.72 weeks (counted inclusively, the decimal fraction representing 5/7 week, i.e.: 5 days). The Novus Ordo “Catholic” hierarchy provides the option of moving it from that day, which arithmetic requires to be a Thursday, to the Sunday that, by traditional counting, would be the 6th Sunday after Easter.
Even stretching the season to the next one whose date is documented, Pentecost Sunday, it would span only 7 weeks, that being the “50th day after” Easter (also Roman inclusive counting). One would need to stretch it farther, to the 1st Sunday after Pentecost, thus its octave day, known to Catholics as Holy Trinity Sunday, to get the 8 weeks claimed for “Easter [the] season”.
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John, that’s a lot of chocolate bunnies and crosses.
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