With December here, cold air descending on Topeka (albeit only for a day), and the season of Advent beginning, it is time to turn to thoughts of Christmas. I have tried as hard as I can to avoid Christmas related music and decorating until Advent starts. It's sort of my way of "rebelling" against our culture that seems to feel the need for Christmas to start the day after Thanksgiving (or even right after Halloween). With Advent now here, my Christmas lights are now turned one and my Christmas tree is now up (much to the delight of my cat). My thoughts now can slowly turn towards the joyous birth of our Lord and Savior in Bethlehem some 2000 years ago.
Sadly, though, as I've gotten older, Christmas has ceased to be my favorite holiday. I know that there are people that just seem to love this holiday more than any other, who could listen to Christmas carols year round and have their lights on perpetually. To me, though, Christmas has lost a lot of its wonder, thanks to the secular and materialist emphases that our culture has placed on it. (If I hear one more commercial hawking products using "Carol of the Bells," I think I'll go crazy.) Christmas is supposed to be about celebrating the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, which is a wonderful and joyous event. It is an appropriate time to give gifts. Yet our society wants to have the joy without the Source. The result is so saccharine that I can hardly take it.
So, while strangely dressed gnomes sing carols to try to get me to buy GPS systems that I neither need nor want, I'm going to content myself with singing the centuries old refrain "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel." Amen, come Lord Jesus. And save us from our own folly.
2 comments:
Amen. So be it.
Ah, too true.
I don't think I could agree more.
Come, Lord Jesus.
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