Not yet Christmas

I like the season of Advent, the time of anticipation before the festival of Christmas. Christians in the United States have largely followed the commercial powers and principalities into celebrating Christmas early and have all but forgotten the accompanying season of Advent.

It's gratifying, however, to see that many bloggers have not. John Frye, for example, writes about Advent awareness in the USA, while in South Wales Richard Hall considers Advent, Mark 13:24-37, and hope. And Doug Floyd has composed a beautiful essay proclaiming that, while creation is fallen and violent, Advent reminds us peace is coming.

If you're a Christian who eschews recognizing seasons of the church, I recommed Dan Edelen's article on regulation, ritual, and remembrance:

I don't understand Evangelicalism's obsession with wiping out the past. In many parts of the American Church today, a flagrant disregard for what and who has come before us dominates all expression toward God. It's as if today's Christians must live in a self-imposed vacuum. . . .

Children grow up without rituals that root them to all of Christendom before them. Today's Evangelical children float in a secularized sea, cast there by well-meaning Christian leaders who employ "regulations" that denounce rituals or scry pointless contemporary "alternatives" to tradition. Is it any wonder that our children reach age eighteen and have no roots to keep them from being torn away from the Faith? How easy is it to depart from God when the experience of God one's been fed has been solely intellectual, tradition relegated to weepy-eyed emotionalism by people who rarely weep!

Whether or not you agree with everything Dan has to say, one thing is certainly true: if the church doesn't provide traditions for Christians, the world will.