Today a parishioner handed me a plastic bracelet that read, “Keep Christ in Christmas” - and a couple of weeks ago an eager young person in line at Starbucks asked me if I was ready for the holidays: are you Christmas or Hannukah? And I had to admit I wasn’t over los Días de los Muertos yet. But of course I’m getting ready: the Hallmark Channel Christmas Movie is doubtless playing 24/7 refreshing every two hours. (Hint: watch the first five and last five minutes. Executive summation: She finally meets the right guy. Just in time for Christmas! There will be grandchildren. Grandma is happy.) But then, we just said goodbye to the first day of the last week of the church year. This morning, November 20th, we observed the feast of Christ the King. (There really is no other.) And what begins next, outside the mall - and Starbucks, is not Christmas but Advent, the anticipation and preparation for the arrival once again for the first time of that King as a Baby. I’m gladly retrieving my Christmas materials and Advent resources: The Martin Luther Christmas Book, The New Oxford Book of Carols, Run Shepherds Run! (a poetry anthology for the season), and For the Time Being, a Christmas Oratorio, by W. H. Auden… this last, written during the Blitz, and newly sadly relevant. (What must they make of it in Kosovo - or the Crimea.) Gladly too I’m putting away on the shelves the last of my Pentecost season references, including sermon helps, commentaries, prayers. And I’m keeping handy Prayer Book and Hymnal. What all this means is that I’m getting ready. It’s a bit premature for that first flower in the snow, the crocus or the yellow flower in the children’s book, but it’s like that in a way. Advent begins a whole new year, a bit early, as we await the turning of the year, just in time for Christmas.
No comments:
Post a Comment