The Culture Beat

Depending on where you live or what your church experience is, you might wonder why I wrote a column about Advent (even describing its basics) and, by extension, the Christian liturgical calendar. Here’s why: By far, most churches in this area of the U.S. are some kind of Baptist — Southern, Freewill, Missionary, etc. — and they generally don’t follow the lliturgical calendar. Next come Methodists of various stripes; some of them observe, but some don’t. Then there’s the group that I’m part of, Christian Churches/Churches of Christ, which, with a few exceptions (including my home congregation, Hopwood Christian Church), don’t observe it either. In other words, most churches around here don’t observe Advent. But, to rip off Bob Dylan: the times, they are a’changing. Maybe. -Jim

Instead of cursing the darkness, the cliché says, it’s better to light a candle. If Christmas is dimmed by commercialization and controversy, more and more Christians seem to be lighting up Advent candles, including those in church groups that mostly ignored the pre-Christmas observance for centuries.

Advent is a double-duty celebration, intended to help worshipers both prepare for Christmas — the first coming, or advent, of Christ — and contemplate the prophecies about his future return. It begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas, which is also the start of the Christian liturgical year, and ends with Christmas Eve.

The most common rite is lighting an “Advent wreath”: four candles in a circle, usually three purple and one rose-colored, one for each week. A large, white “Christ candle” stands in the center of the circle, waiting to be lit on Christmas.

According to Paul Blowers, a church historian at Emmanuel School of Religion, the Advent season probably began early in the Christian era as a short period of fasting to prepare for Christmas, growing in length and theological meaning in the following centuries.

Blowers (rhymes with “powers”) sees those changes in Advent as reflections of shifting Christian concerns. For example, earlier in church history Epiphany, a feast day on Jan. 6 that celebrates the wise men’s visit to baby Jesus and Jesus’ baptism, was more important than Advent. (Epiphany also marks the end of the 12 days of Christmas. Do the math.) But as the church and the surrounding culture changed, so did the focus of the feasts.

“The original interest of the church was the early ministry of Jesus itself, and the baptism as the inauguration of his ministry,” he said. “But the more that the doctrine of his incarnation became important, especially with concerns about the Gnostics (a sect that denied Jesus was fully human), the celebration of his incarnation became important.”

For about a thousand years, Christians in the West uniformly observed the liturgical calendar, including Advent. Then came the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s. As the church splintered, many reformers rejected the calendar as a Roman Catholic holdover, unbiblical and unnecessary and maybe even heretical.

Fast-forward to the new and expanding United States in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, where independentminded Americans were eager to distance themselves from Europe in religion as well as politics. Besides that, many groups also were trying to recover what they considered the pure, unadorned biblical faith and practice — and the Bible didn’t outline a church calendar.

But, said Blowers, “the free churches reacted so violently against anything that they thought nonbiblical, in many cases they threw out the baby with the bath water.”

Lately, however, he’s noticed more and more evangelical churches celebrating Advent, a trend he says is “fairly widespread.”

It’s hard to measure such shifts, but the manager of a local Christian supply store has reported “a noticeable increase” in sales of Advent wreaths and candles, compared to last year. (Because of company policy, he asked not to have the store named and couldn’t give specific figures.)

“When I was growing up, I never even heard the word Advent,” Blowers said, who was raised in the church group known as Christian Churches/Churches of Christ. “But the Advent wreath has come into new usage in traditionally nonliturgical churches. The very fact that a number of Christian Churches even have an Advent wreath — that’s a significant breakthrough.”

It’s hard to say why this trend is emerging now. Maybe, Blowers suggests, Christians see Advent as “a way to inoculate Christians from the commercial and other activities that distract from celebrating the birth of Christ.”

As the holidays grow more commercialized every year (despite the traditional complaint-fest about commercialization) and as Christmas attracts more controversy each year (When is it OK to say “Merry Christmas”?), perhaps a simple act like lighting an Advent candle can help illuminate the sacred meaning of Christmas.

“I think some people are seeing the light as far as having a Christian calendar and sticking to it,” Blowers said. “Historically, there’s nothing unscriptural about it. The whole point is to celebrate the salvation set forth in the biblical revelation. The Christian calendar does that.”

(First published in the Johnson City (Tenn.) Press, 9 Dec 2006.)
Graphic from the Archdiocese of Indianapolis Web site.