No, Target: We do not believe that Christmas begins on November 1. You must be thinking of All Saints’ Day. Christmas begins on December 25.
People have been complaining as long as I can remember that the Christmas season starts too early. It seems to begin earlier every year. I’m grateful that our Anglican tradition preserves the season of Advent, which begins on November 29 this year, as well as the traditional twelve days of Christmas. It’s important to set aside time so that we can adequately prepare our hearts to meet the coming Christ. (Side note: I will not judge you for listening to Christmas music at any time of year.)
I couldn’t help but notice that the Collect for tomorrow’s Eucharist seems very Advent-ish. Here’s the prayer that will be said during the service:
.....“O God, whose blessed Son was manifested that he might
.....destroy the works of the devil and make us children of
.....God and heirs of eternal life: Grant us, we beseech thee, that,
.....having this hope, we may purify ourselves even as he is pure;
.....that, when he shall appear again with power and great glory,
.....we may be made like unto him in his eternal and glorious
.....kingdom; where with thee, O Father, and thee, O Holy Ghost,
.....he liveth and reigneth ever, one God, world without end. Amen.”
Advent is about preparing to meet Christ, and although this means we usually think about his Nativity (his first advent), it’s also about preparing to meet Christ when he returns to judge the world (his second advent).
But why are we being encouraged to think about this right now, at this time of year? Is the Book of Common Prayer getting ahead of itself? Advent doesn’t start for another three weeks.
The answer is that the Church has an older tradition of observing Advent for seven weeks. After the season was shortened to four weeks, as it is now, the Sundays before Advent became known as pre-Advent. The fact that this Collect is assigned to tomorrow’s Eucharist is a remnant of that older tradition. The Collect is inviting us to prepare our hearts even now. It’s a recognition that we are waiting for something.
We’re waiting for a lot of things right now. As I’m writing this, America still does not know with certainty who its next president will be. But even after that is decided, we will still be waiting. We’ll be waiting to see if our divisions will continue to deepen or if we’ll begin to heal. We’ll be waiting for the pandemic to end. We’ll be waiting to see when things will finally be back to normal—and waiting to see what ‘normal’ is going to mean from now on.
But as Christians, we know that our lives are defined by waiting. We’re waiting for something far bigger—and better—than normal. We’re waiting for something that is even better than Christmas. We’re waiting for God to finish the work that was begun on the cross, to “destroy the works of the devil.” We’re waiting for Christ to “appear again with power and great glory” so that “we may be made like unto him in his eternal and glorious kingdom.”
The Christian life is an Advent life. And so we wait.
Pre-Advent Blessings,
Fr. Stewart
