It’s Almost Christmas (Nope!)

In the this episode of Christian Mythbusters, Father Jared debunks the myth that “It’s Almost Christmas.” You can hear Christian Mythbusters in the Grand Haven area on 92.1, WGHN, on Wednesdays at 10:30am and Sundays at 8:50am. The transcript of the episode is below, or you can listen to the audio at the bottom of the post. This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith. Well, the 2020 presidential election is now behind us. I record this segment in advance and so I don’t know who won, but odds are you still don’t know who won. So, I figure, let’s go ahead and talk about something else… at least for a minute. The end of the Halloween season and the movement into November always marks the beginning of a new season in the commerce of our country, the season of “It’s almost Christmas.” Now of course, Christmas is still just a little less than two months away, but you probably could not tell that when you took a look at stores that are already hard at work setting up their aisles for Christmas decorations. And so today I would like to bust the myth of the idea that it’s almost Christmas… especially if you are a Christian who follows the traditional calendar of the church. The feast of the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ, commonly known as Christmas, is a feast that actually last 12 days, from December 25 until January 5, culminating with the great Feast of the Epiphany on January 6. That’s where that song “The 12 days of Christmas” comes from. But in the calendar of the church, we have a lot to do before Christmas arrives. We are still on our journey and Bethlehem is a long ways off. In the church we have just celebrated the Feasts of All Saints’ and All Souls’ Days, remembering that great communion of saints who encourage us on our daily walk, and also those faithful departed whose memories we still hold dear. And so now we are now in the final weeks of what is known as Ordinary time, those final weeks before we reach Advent (which will begin this year on Sunday, November 29). And during these last weeks before Advent, the church invites us to look toward the future, not to begin a nostalgic looking back to Christmases long gone or even to that very first Christmas. The church invites us during these last weeks to remember that the world we live in is not forever but that there will come a day when Christ will return, and God’s love will finally be made manifest in this broken world. And so, in the traditional Christian calendar, we hear Scripture readings at this time of the year about the end of time, about the importance of repentance, about looking at the world we know God wants to bring about and then asking how we need to change our lives to be a part of that world God dreams of. This journey of looking toward the end of time and asking how our lives need to change will culminate in the last Sunday after Pentecost, called Christ the King Sunday in many Christian traditions. And then the week after that Advent will begin, but Advent not as an early celebration of Christmas, but as four weeks of prayer and fasting, four weeks of giving up of yourself to the needs of this world so that you can prepare yourself to celebrate Christmas when it finally comes on December 25th. Don’t get me wrong, we all know Christmas is coming—after Thanksgiving I’ll be right out there at the tree farms with most of you. But I encourage you to explore some of these more ...