“On the First Day of Christmas, my true love sent to me a partridge in a pear tree..." But if there are 12 days of Christmas, when is the first day?
Traditionally, the four weeks of Advent, leading up to Christmas Day, were a time of fasting, and getting ready, spiritually, for the feast, which began on December 25th.
Christmas celebrations start early now - retailers would like us to believe that the 12 days of Christmas are the 12 shopping days leading up to Christmas. Lights and decorations have been up for weeks already, and there are school concerts, work dinners, parties and celebrations of all kinds. Advent tends to get lost.
It’s impossible to turn the clock back, – and perhaps we wouldn’t want to! But there might be something to be said for recapturing some of the Advent traditions.
Waiting is a central theme of Advent - not just waiting for Christmas festivities, but for the arrival of a new era of peace, and justice, and goodwill that Christmas symbolizes. The Book of Revelation promises a future when ‘God will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
The gospel message, though, isn’t just about waiting passively for some kind of magical solution to the world’s problems. It’s a call to us, to make it happen, here and now. How? Well, the prophet Micah puts it in simple, practical terms: all God asks of us is that we: “…do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with our God.”
In between the celebrations and the shopping trips, then, let’s make time this Advent to give thanks for what we do have, instead of getting caught up in wanting more –
and to ask ourselves in what small ways each day we can “do justice” and “love kindness”, to make the world a better place, and begin to make peace and justice a reality.
This was first broadcast on Good Morning Sunday, BBC Radio 2, Sunday December 2nd 2012