Don't have too much to say about Thanksgiving, honestly, which may seem odd seeing as how I have spent a good deal of the previous holiday posts griping about how early Christmas comes. You'd think I would be more about giving Thanksgiving its due.
But I'm not much of a Thanksgiving guy. It is a day I tend to look forward to with some level of dread, only becuase there is usually some major hassle associated with the day, be it cooking or cleaning or traveling. Now, it is nothing compared to the hassle of Christmas itself, with the gift buying and the house decorating layered on top of cooking and traveling, but for some reason at Christmas it seems justified. Thanksgiving...well, it just doesn't seem worth the trouble.
And yet it always turns out that it is worth it one way or another, and I always end up actually enjoying the day when it arrives.
So, that's Thanksgiving. This year we went to Stanton to see my wife's family and we were treated to a dinner that was huge and seeming effortless...but that's probably becuase we arrived one hour before dinner was served.
After Thanksgiving I went to my 10th year high school reunion, which was a blast. I was a little skeptical about it becuase it was held in a bar in Blacksburg, but that turned out to be a fantastic idea. $15 got you in with two drinks and some hoursderves, there were no planned activities or speeches, just people drinking the beverage of their choice and catching up. If anyone out there is planning a reunion, I would highly recommend having a casual event at a good bar. Thank you to everyone who planned the reunion and put it on, it was great.
So, after that comes the Christmas season in earnest, and while it would be easy to focus on the melee that is Black Friday, I find I would rather step insdie the Church.
It is, of course, the first week of Advent. We don't do it so much in the Lutheran Chruch, but I remember in the Episcopal Church I went to growing up we would sing some of the versus of O Come O Come Emmanuel every week, which is a wonderful but sort of dreary hymn that aches with the longing for a Messiah.
I say it's dreary, and Advent is a bit of a dreary time in the mainstream Christian Church. It stands in stark contrast to the commercialized month-long spending orgy going on outside the Church doors, and I reckon it even stands in contrast to the more Christian carols dripping with honey over a perfect newborn babe that you can buy in plastic format for your Fontanini nativity sets.
I didn't notice this when I was a child becuase I was too busy looking at the advent wreath and contemplating the weeks left until Christmas, but Advent is the one time of year that the mainline Church really talks about the end of days; a scary prospect for us becuase we're not sure really what that means, and our faiths are perhaps allow for too much moral and metaphysical relativity to assure ourselves of our own salvation.
It all serves to remind us that the world is still a dark place. It may not be as dark as when Mary and Joseph traveled to Bethlehem under the prejudiced eyes of Roman Centurians, but it's still a pretty dreary place when you stop and reflect.
When I look at the Advent wreath these days, I don't find myself counting the Sundays left until Christmas, but rather I end up focusing on the small flame that flickers in defiance symbolizing the hope we as Christians - as any people of faith, really - place in God.
And if this season has a "reason" beyond getting gifts and seeing friends and family, to me that is it. I don't know if I beleive in the virgin birth or even in the whole thing with the manger. But I do believe that Christ is the light of the World, the light which no darkness can overcome, and on Christmas Day, in the midst of the darkness of winter, that is what we who believe gather together to celebrate.
And the dark season of Advent makes that hope burn all the brighter. Reflect, prepare, meditate, and on Christmas Day light a candle against the darkness, give thanks to God, and go and eat some Figgy Pudding.
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