Can We Celebrate During Advent?

Centuries ago, the seasons of Advent and Lent were observed with similar gravity, i.e., intensive fasting, penitential Scriptural and liturgical tones, etc. Have you ever noticed that both Advent and Lent have a break from the gravitas—a midway Sunday in rose color vestments, as we had last weekend [December 13-14, Gaudete Sunday] and on the Fourth Sunday of Lent [Laetare Sunday]? My household certainly observed Advent, though we did hang stockings on the night of December 5, in the hope that good St. Nick would give us a foretaste of Christmas joy. [Tangerines and fudge, usually.] We got away with our own little pre-Christmas celebration because the visit came from a saint, Nicholas of Myra, in modern day Türkiye. Nicholas was quite a character: tortured by the Romans, he survived and was a voting member at the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D., which formulated our Mass Creed today. It is fairly certain that during the council he encountered Arius, the heretic who denied the divinity of Jesus, and smacked him across the face. The secret gift-giving on December 6 has come down to us from Nicholas’ practice of leaving bags of money on the windowsills of young women for use as their dowry, so they could marry and not resort to prostitution. [See, we never hear the good stuff in catechism class.]
 
Unlike Lent, Advent did not have the daily adult fasting rule except for the three Ember Days which, coincidentally, are this week as I write, December 17, 19, 20 this year. See the U.S. Bishops’ explanation of Ember Days here; these days are still observed but without the obligation of mortal sin attached, as they did when I was growing up. The Ember Days used to catch your attention, coming as they did four times per year with fascinating prescriptions. The Ember Day Masses in the old missal included multiple Scripture readings, unusual for that time. I haven’t heard a parish explanation or announcement about the Ember Days since I was about 15.
 
All of that said, my mother was still disgruntled with all the pre-Christmas celebrations and decorations in the neighborhood and on TV, etc. Even among us kids, she suspected that our spiritual devotions, such as they were, focused too much upon the coming of Santa and a generous haul from his workshop. To tell you the truth, in the third grade I worried more during Advent about what Santa thought about me than Jesus did. Meanwhile, my mother would pronounce annually—usually around September—that “this year we were going to have a ‘spiritual’ Christmas.” That sounded ominous to us little kids, until I learned to say, “Next year, ma, next year. Promise.” My mother lived to be 94, and in my adulthood, I never thought to ask her what “a spiritual Christmas” would have looked like. Even today I think it meant fewer toys, more rosaries, and only God knows what else—some monasteries around the world still practice self-flagellation. We’ll never know.
 
Third grade was the tectonic shift year as I moved on from Santa [but not the gifts] to intensive Church involvement, with allowances for age, of course. [At the bottom of this post, I have a funny story about my last Christmas with Santa.] In the third or fourth grade “Santa” brought me a leather-bound adult daily Missal. I started going to Mass every day even on Saturday mornings and summer vacations and soon became an altar boy. I have to say that the missal was very useful and yet it raised questions about Advent and Christmas.
 
ADVENT, AS SEEN FROM SCHOOL AND PULPIT, c. 1956
 
I should note here that I am recalling a time when the Mass was offered entirely in Latin if you can imagine. That included the [then] two Scripture readings, one from St. Paul, and one from the Gospels. The Lectionary as we know it today did not come into existence till 1970. The readings were the same every year, no A-B-C cycles back then. In the 1950’s I believe the Gospel might have been read occasionally in English—by one of the associate pastors—at the conventual or parish high Mass. But as a rule, you never heard English at Mass except during the sermon [which was sometimes skipped] and the announcements…as on one Christmas in the 1950’s when my pastor read, at all the Christmas Masses, including the children’s Mass, a letter from Buffalo’s Bishop Burke instructing all Catholics to avoid a downtown movie theater which was showing the film, “Baby Doll.” Buffalo already had a thriving burlesque house, “The Palace,” so I figured this must be a really naughty movie to get a Christmas warning. [It was a morally troubling movie, I learned today, but not for the reasons you might think.”]
 
As a youngster I got the drift of the Gospel arrangement in the liturgical year: it paralleled Jesus’ life. I had no understanding of St. Paul, his texts, and their placement in the Missal. The Gospels for the Sundays after Pentecost [today’s “Ordinary Time”] covered Jesus’ life till the end of October with the Feast of Christ the King on the last Sunday of October. November Sunday Masses were “fill in Gospels” because of the moveable date of Easter, but “The Last Sunday after Pentecost in late November ended, I thought, the biography of Jesus with Matthew's awesome telling of the end of the world.
 
So around comes Advent--new beginning, turn toward joy and Christmas. The vestments switched from green to purple, Catholic calendars reminded us that we were entering a new liturgical year. Our Catholic school teachers taught us ahead of time about the coming of Jesus and the season of Advent. There was no Advent wreath in my church; the practice was introduced into the United States in the 1930’s by the Lutherans, actually, who invented the practice in Europe in the 1600’s. More likely than not, my parish’s sermon on the First Sunday of Advent in 1956 or 1957 outlined what we should do during Advent, specifically, to be good and to prepare ourselves for Jesus’ coming, however one interpreted that. Confession was implied in that preparation, but beyond that, life went on as usual in the parish. When I used my missal for Advent the first time, I assumed that the Advent Gospels would be a build-up to the birth of Jesus, and I was looking forward to that. Imagine my shock at discovering, on the first Sunday, that the Gospel had nothing to do with the biblical countdown to Bethlehem. Rather, the text was a repeat of the previous week’s Gospel, from Matthew 24, about the terror of the last days. [Ironically, that same text was read this year—2025--from Cycle A in the reformed lectionary!]
 
I felt somewhat let down, but I had high hopes for the next week, the Second Sunday of Advent. But the Gospel of that day, Matthew 11: 2-10, told of John the Baptist in prison, an event thirty plus years after Bethlehem. With my disappointment mounting, the Gospel of the Third Sunday of Advent featured a debate between the scribes and the adult John the Baptist. And, to close out the Advent Sundays, Luke’s Gospel consisted of a sermon by the adult John. Not a word, at least in my understanding, of the Christmas narrative we learned at home and in religious instruction. Notice I did not mention preachers; in their honest moments they will tell you even today that preaching during Advent was/is a bear. I cannot remember a single Advent sermon I preached in twenty years; that may be a blessing in disguise. I don’t recall ever giving a scold sermon during Advent—decrying materialism and too much partying before December 25, because I knew no one would take it seriously and I saw no point in spending credibility on a lost cause.
 
SO, WHAT DO WE MAKE OF ADVENT?
 
It was not until I attended graduate school that the season of Advent with its liturgies and Scripture readings were explained in a way that addressed my youthful puzzlement. I will start with that.
 
Advent is indeed a united season, observing the coming of Jesus. But Advent focuses upon the two comings, so to speak. The beginning of Advent focuses upon the Second Coming of Jesus at the end of time. It carries forth the theme of the year ending before it. The Second Coming is such a cosmic event that the evangelists struggle to find words for it. Jesus himself uses several similes, including the parable of the great king who divides the human species into the sheep and the goats. The reason for God’s unfathomable act of creation is expressed in Jesus’ own words: “And I, if I be lifted from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” God has given everyone that choice to bond with Jesus as he reveals himself in the Gospels, to accept his invitation. It is a choice that must be made in brutal honesty [“many will cry out, Lord! Lord!”], without reservation, at many points in our lives, a choice that governs every one of our major decisions.
 
It is not an exaggeration to say that Advent is very close in spirit to Lent. John the Baptist—highlighted in Advent--preached a forgiveness of sins so that we might be ready to be counted among the elect. Were I preaching today, I think I would place emphasis upon the urgency of honest reflection upon how much I need to be in step with the One whom God has sent. I don’t have a clear answer for how we integrate and celebrate the Second Coming of Christ in glory during Advent; perhaps the point of the first part of Advent is to impart the nature of divine time, that our clocks are all running toward a future time when God will embrace his universe and his faithful souls in a glory we cannot imagine.
 
A logical question involves the Advent timeline. Wouldn’t it make more sense to open the Church Year, including the Advent season, with the humble but miraculous events of Jesus’ birth, and then go into the future promise of universal glory down the road? In the seventy years since I first wrestled with the Advent liturgies, I’ve come to some fresh thinking on the matter. Put simply, the birth of Jesus would have been noted in the Roman Empire as just another number for its census takers. There must be a setting for the coming of this child, which both Matthew and Luke provide as best they can.
 
When the Angel Gabriel announced God’s mission for Mary, she was right to ask, “How can this be?” She was not stubborn or insolent. Rather, she represented all of us in asking “what is this marvelous event to unfold before our eyes?” Of course, as we now read the liturgical Gospel accounts of Jesus’ arrival in the second half of Advent [which began on December 17] and continue through Christmas and Epiphany, it is hard to overlook that the origin of the human Jesus—i.e., the Christmas narrative--was filled with worry and pain of all sorts. Matthew reports that babies were killed as King Herod sought Jesus to kill him, for example.
 
Every priest ordained has a standard sermon in his file for Advent about the celebrating and materialism of Christmas, particularly as it begins earlier every year and swamps the observance of Advent. And it is true that Christmas spending is a pillar of the U.S. economy, that we give and receive a lot of gifts we don’t need, that we eat and especially drink more than we should. You must have heard this before.
 
But at the same time, we can hardly absorb the Scriptural message of Advent without an impulse to celebrate. Christ now and Christ to come; there would be something terribly wrong with us if our redemption in this life and promise of endless future glory did not call forth an impulse to rejoice. Remember Luke 15:22ff:
 
Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. And bring the fattened calf and kill it and let us eat and celebrate. For this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ And they began to celebrate.
 
As Advent unfolds, we should celebrate, too.
 
 

 
A childhood memory:
 
Back in third grade I was on the cusp of belief in Santa Claus. On Christmas Eve my maternal grandparents hosted an annual low-key party for their children and families. We began every year with the Rosary, prayed with various levels of tolerance by children less than twelve hours before Christmas morning. Then there was a one-gift exchange and cookies and punch. I think—I’m not sure—that December 24 was a day of fast and abstinence, so the adults just chatted while we ate cookies. I was having a fun time, and I was not happy to go home—three blocks away—at 9 PM. I grumbled and piled into the car for the short ride home.
 
This being East Buffalo, we passed three bars on the short ride home along Filmore Avenue, all of them open for business. As we passed the largest one, I was shocked out of my boots and mittens. There, in front of the drinking establishment, stood Santa Claus. And Santa was smoking a cigarette.
 
I was pretty young, and no Einstein certainly, but I’m in a panic because Santa is probably 600’s from my house. I was sure that when he finished his Camel’s he’d be in my house very soon, and he might not stop if we weren’t there. My father was very nonchalant about the crisis, and by some miracle we got to bed before Santa arrived.
 
This, of course, got me to thinking previously forbidden thoughts, that there might be more to this “Santa Claus” deal than I had been told. And I suppose that this episode was a painful if vital step in my psychological development. It was like finding out later in life that wrestling is fixed.