Thank you to Rev Rachael Hawkins, Minister of Chandler’s Ford Methodist Church, for sharing this article with the community:
Dear friends,
Am I the only one who thinks that Christmas celebrations seem to have started particularly early this year? The Christmas adverts always seem to start in early November and the shops seem to start looking to Christmas once the Halloween stock disappears, but it feels as though there is also a desire in people more generally to start celebrations early. For the last week or so I have been noticing houses being decorated and trees going up, only a few, but they are around. One of my favourite memories from childhood is putting the Christmas tree up on Christmas Eve. It goes up earlier than that in our house nowadays, but it means that seeing decorations up so early still feels very odd to me.
I was intrigued, however, by a comment I heard recently asking whether decorations are going up early because people need it. Decorations, lights, coming together for meals, making time to do something special all give moments of joy and when people are struggling, when life feels hard, having those moments can be valuable. Life does feel hard for many people at the moment and so the comment made me see those early decorations going up in a different way.
In the church we often struggle to maintain the difference between Advent and Christmas and I would certainly want to encourage us to mark Advent. Paula Gooder wrote a book a few years ago called ‘The Meaning is in the Waiting’. It’s a title I have always liked because it challenges me to take time to recognise the value in the waiting, that there is something important about not having what we want immediately, despite the message we are often given by advertisers. The example that Paula Gooder gives is that of pregnancy – those months of pregnancy give us time to prepare, its an active waiting, and actually we don’t want a baby to arrive early, we know time is needed for the baby to fully grow and be ready to be born.
One of the main themes of Advent, however, is the theme of Hope. As those decorations go up, I think many people are expressing their hope and their desire for hope, a message that we as Christians have to give to others. The Methodist resources for Advent and Christmas this year are called ‘Gifted’. And as we look to our Christmas celebrations, we see the reason for our hope and the gift that we have to give to the world. Born in humble surroundings, to a young couple who probably didn’t have much of an idea what they were doing, visited by shepherds and foreigners, “our God contracted to a span, incomprehensibly made man”.
I hope you all have a hopeful Advent and a very happy Christmas.
(Published in the December edition of The Link Magazine, Chandler’s Ford Methodist Church).
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