Gareth Crispin suggests that you can get preparing for Advent now, and reap the benefits later
No doubt you’ve seen the signs of Christmas already. The notices about office Christmas parties often come first, then mince pies in the supermarket (even with an end of November best before!) earlier and earlier the preparations seem to start! As I type I’m waiting for my son who’s playing in a music group and two mums have literally just started singing Santa Clause is coming to town! You couldn’t have scripted it better!
As Christians we can get swept up in this rush to Christmas and forget that there is a season that comes before The Season – I’m talking about advent. But what exactly is advent and why do we celebrate it? The purists will say (and I found this out after over 35 years in churches!) that advent is when we remember the second coming of Christ. The idea is that before we celebrate the first coming of Christ at Christmas, we take a moment to celebrate the second coming at Advent. As a youth, children and families worker I tried year after year to get this changed. I used to say:
‘look, think about it from the perspective of youth and children or even people new to the faith, it’s so confusing! We start in September with a Gospel with Jesus walking around teaching and healing, we then switch in advent to Jesus coming again (where he went no one knows because we haven’t got to Easter yet!) then suddenly he is being born at Christmas (but I thought he was already walking around and … er … then ‘coming again’), we then want to go deep with a bit of Old Testament and finish off in the spring/summer with a New Testament letter. Confused? people will be!’
Advent can be the fast before the feast, the season of reflecting and preparing
Sadly, I lost that argument year after year. Before we get on to advent have a think about how your church year flows chronologically – it makes a difference to youth and children (and in fact people who are new to the faith). I was told that we had to do advent then and we had to say that it was all about the second coming because that was what it was really about. But that doesn’t make sense, it’s a social construction, we’ve made it up, we can change it! OK rant over.
It might be too late to change your whole church calendar (but come back to that with your church leaders in the new year before they’ve planned the next academic year) but it’s probably not too late to change what advent means to you and your church family. The sensible and obvious thing to talk about is how we are waiting for Jesus’ first coming. So many people were waiting for God’s Messiah to come and Mary was literally waiting for the birth and in the same way that they prepared themselves we too should get ready. It’s not mandated in the Bible, but it’s a good thing to do. Advent can be the fast before the feast, the season of reflecting and preparing. It should mean that when you do get to Christmas itself your family is better placed to enjoy Christmas as a celbraion of the one you’ve been waiting for.
But how might families and churches do that this year? What ideas are there? Well, here are two things you can do and if you act now, you can get any of these ready for the start of advent (which in case you want to know is 30 November this year – 4 Sundays before Christmas).
Advent calendars
OK so it’s another tradition that we nicked from the Germans about a hundred years ago but what’s useful is useful. There used to be a time when Christian advent calendars (yes I know in theory they should all be Christian but…) had no chocolate inside so either no one bought them or parents bought one AND one that did have chocolate in it (but zero Jesus). Mercifully in the last couple of decades people have started making proper advent calendars with chocolate and they are a winner.
The Meaningful Chocolate Company make ‘The Real Advent Calendar’ and it comes with a story activity book, one page for each day, with a reading that links to the window that is being opened. You can spend a couple of minutes opening the window, reading the booklet engaging with what it suggests and saying a quick prayer, and yes, eating the chocolate! You could even look to promote them in the local community and schools, it’s an easy way to engage with those around you. If you want to dig deeper into the options, look up this blog post from Faith in Kids. Also check out the Premier advent calendar and look at other shopping options on the site.
Advent family Bible times
As with the calendars there are a number of resources out there to help you engage and reflect on advent as a family. One great example is ‘The Adventure of Christmas’ from the Good Book Company. It functions a bit like an advent calendar that the whole family explores together. There are top tips on how to manage different ages and stages, a daily Bible reading, questions divided up by age and optional extras ranging from suggestions for relevant testimonies through to baking ideas.
Many of us are nervous about doing something like this – what would I say? What will I do? What if they don’t like it? What if they ask me questions I can’t answer? Well, this short little resource equips you and encourages you to give it a go – and think of it like this: the run up to Christmas is the best time to do this, things are always different in December and youth and children in your families will be expecting to talk about Jesus.
