Advent 4A

Dear Friends in Christ,

I’ve always been a bit of a Christmas purist – Christmas begins on Christmas Day and runs through Epiphany. Before that it’s Advent, an important season in its own right. I’m also a Christmas minimalist as far as secular Christmastide is concerned – Jesus is the reason for the season and all that. Inside my house both these things currently apply. My only nod to Christmas indoors so far is my undecorated tree in the corner of my living room and a Fisher Price Little People Nativity set bought for my grandson to play with, which seems to have become our official Nativity set this year. Outside it is a different matter. The front of my house is lit up like a beacon and I am still considering how to put more lights out there.

I’ve always enjoyed the Christmas lights in the front of my house and yard. Every time I pull into my driveway my heart is gladdened by the colorful lights and festive decorations. And even when I stay home, simply knowing they are there makes me feel comforted in some way. But the other day as I peeked through the blinds to look at the lights, I wondered why we seemed to put more effort into decorating the outside of the house rather than the inside which we could see all the time. And then I remembered that every time I see my neighbor across the street, she tells me how pretty our lights are, and how much she enjoys looking at them, and how they brighten her day and make her feel happy. She is a single lady in her 70’s and doesn’t put lights up anymore so she always makes a point of telling us how much she enjoys ours, and when we take them down she is sadder than we are. And that got me thinking about the tradition of putting lights up at Christmas time.

We are in the darkest time of the year when the sun is low on the horizon. Days are short and nights are long. Fields and gardens are bare as the earth rests, and trees and plants are dormant. My Christmas light fascination really took off during the pandemic, a particularly dark time for all of us. I put them up early and left them up until Candlemas on February 2nd (the official end of Christmas according to Henry VIII who forced the rest of the Royal Court to comply!).

It is no accident that we celebrate the birth of Christ at this time. From the earliest times ancient people believed that the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year when the earth is tilted away from the sun, was the time when the sun died and was reborn, and they lit bonfires to welcome the sun back and make sure she didn’t forget to return. When better to celebrate the birth of Jesus, who also died and was resurrected, who is the light of the world that shines in the darkness and which the darkness cannot overcome. And what better way to observe that than by putting up lights of every color and intensity to shine in the darkness of winter.

Like ancient people from the beginning of time who used fire to light their darkness, Christmas lights remind us that even when things are at their darkest, Jesus is always with us, and God will never abandon us. So, I will continue to enjoy my Christmas lights and to shine the hope and joy of the anticipated birth of the Savior of the world into the darkness.

Yours in Christ,

Rev. Jane+