Some facts: (1) I am writing this a week and a half before Thanksgiving.  (2) Christmas this year is December 25, pretty much the same day as last year.  (3) That makes December 24 Christmas Eve.  I point out these facts because the calendar can be confusing.  Or maybe it’s a matter of which calendar you use.

Two weeks before Halloween, my son Matt texted me from a department store in Milledgeville where he is in school.  He included a photo of a Christmas display.  According to the official Retail Calendar (maintained and guarded somewhere in New York, I believe), Christmas Eve falls on the Tuesday after Columbus Day.  The day after that is also Christmas Eve, as is the next day and the next, and so on, until December 26 when the After Christmas sales begin.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.  In fact, I have to admit I enjoy the non-stop festive atmosphere—music, lights, televisions specials.  I don’t even especially mind being greeted with “Happy Holidays” (call me a heretic).  Again, it’s all a matter of whose calendar you’re using.  The goal of the Retail Calendar is to get folks into a Christmas/Holiday (i.e., buying) mood (i.e., frenzy) and keep them there as long as possible.  If I were a retailer, I’d probably do the same.

But I’m not a retailer.  I guess I’m a reteller.  With you, I’m called to retell a holy and miraculous story year after year, and that story is the framework for OUR calendar, the Christian calendar.  According to that calendar, the “Christmas season” begins December 25, not in October, and the month leading up to Christmas is the season of Advent.

And here is where it gets confusing: Advent isn’t Christmas.

As the whole world screams “Christmas!” (or “Holidays!”), the church speaks, in a calm, even prayerful, voice, “Advent.”   As the world shouts “It’s here!” we say, “We await him” (him, not “it”).  Advent is a time to consider the world’s (that is, our) need for Christmas and the salvation that comes with the one who is “God with us.”  Advent is a time of waiting in the promises of God.  But waiting isn’t easy.  So, in our impatience, we are tempted to skip Advent and offer instead the drama of the Nativity three shows a Sunday, all month long.

This year, let’s try to trust the great story.  I know that when I’m out and about I will enjoy all that the world’s holiday season has to offer.  But when we come to church let’s put away the retail calendar and its rows of Christmas Eves and allow the great story to unfold at its own beautiful and miraculous pace.  That way, when December 25 at last arrives, you and I will be ready to celebrate the wonderful news that everyone needs to hear: “Unto us a child is born …”

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