Before all else let me say: 2020 has been an incredibly stressful and difficult year for us all. Whether you are a lay person looking for individual resources or a clergy person seeking resources for your community I ask to you be gentle and generous with yourself and others. All of the below is information and suggestions. Do what you need to do for your own mental health and well being, stay home, stay safe.
Ok, let’s talk about Advent and Christmas in a pandemic.
We’ll first sort out some liturgical housekeeping: Christmas is not Christianity’s most important feast (that’s Easter). Christmas joined the Christian calendar fairly late (in the 4th century). And the religious observance of Advent, Christmas and Epiphany requires almost none of what we have come to associate with December festivities in the United States and Europe.
Christmas has (in the last 100 years or so) been given enormous cultural significance and weight, mostly I’m afraid because it drives consumer spending. All that pomp is less about religion and more about parting you from your money than you’d like to believe. We’ve been snookered with romantic imagery and pseudo religious messages into the juggernaut that is modern American Christmas.
It didn’t have to be that way and in 2020 “the way we’ve always done things” won’t work. This year may be the perfect time to bring some sanity back to Advent and Christmas.
Christmas wasn’t celebrated in the very early church. We don’t see its development until the 4th century (in Rome.) The Christmas celebrations roughly coincided with Saturnalia. Advent may have actually predated the Christmas feast as a fast directly in opposition to the Saturnalia debauchery and gluttony. Either way, Christmas was the joyful commemoration of the Incarnation, of God putting on human flesh and living with us. Advent was a season (it has varied from 40 days to the current roughly 4 weeks) of preparation and fasting, often emphasizing helping the poor and fasting in solidarity with them.
Christmas isn’t about “togetherness” or “family.” Christmas is the radical claim that the creator of all that is gave up power, privilege, and comfort to enter into human experience; to experience our joy, sorrow, pleasure, suffering, and even death. For us to endanger the lives of our fellow human beings, lives sanctified by the Incarnation, for the feast of the Incarnation is blasphemy.
Fortunately, preparing for and celebrating the feast of the Incarnation is something we can do authentically and well, even in the midst of a pandemic.
Suggestions for Advent
It has been a long, stressful, and difficult year. And this holiday season (like the Easter season) will be different from past years. Don’t try to recreate “normal.”
Keep Advent simple and encourage your friends/family/congregants to do so as well. Remember that Jesus’ compassion was for the poor, the sick, and the hurting. Our first rule for Advent this year should be: do no harm, spread no disease.
This liturgist and theologian suggests that we emphasize rest, service, and inner preparation this year. Here are some ideas, I don’t suggest doing them all, pick just a few.
- Mark each week of Advent with an at home liturgy of candle lighting and prayer. You can find a complete liturgy (for individual or household use) here.
- Consider creating a “reverse Advent calendar.” (Fill a box with non-perishable food items, contact your local food banks for their list of needs and how to donate them).
- Donate to soup kitchens, or cook for feeding programs (check with your local programs for COVID guidelines as some cannot accept home cooked food at this time.)
- Set aside time each day or week for a simple spiritual practice or devotional reading.
- Make a list of the people you know who may be particularly isolated right now (this includes those with disabilities, chronic health issues, the elderly, those with children, those who live alone, etc). Make it a point to call the folks on your list at some point in Advent and just visit on the phone!
- Send Christmas cards. Remember, Christmas isn’t until the 25th of December so there is no rush mailing these. Take your time and send personal greetings to people you love, write a prayer in the card if that is appropriate for that person, keep sending these right through the Christmas season. (When I send Christmas cards I wait to mail them until Christmas Eve so they arrive during the 12 days.)
- Set aside intentional time for rest each week. Schedule it on your calendar.
- Indulge in lots of minor key Advent music! (Here’s a Spotify playlist.)
- Wait. Wait to bake the cookies, wait to hang the decorations. None of these things have to happen during Advent (and I suggest doing them during the Christmas season, not Advent). But if you chose to decorate in Advent do it slowly, savor it. Simplify. If the idea of what you normally do for decorations or baking seems overwhelming don’t do it. The feast will still happen, regardless of how you have decorated (or not).
- Skip the gifts. Gifts are in no way necessary to celebrate Christmas, and in a time of economic uncertainty and a record number of people pushed into poverty, food insecurity, and homelessness the obligation of gift exchange runs opposite to the theological meaning of the season.
- All of that said: this has been a deeply hard and stressful year. If what you need in the darkest month is twinkle lights, ornaments, and fake snow then have at it, no guilt and no “advent police” here! (I will begin putting up greenery and white lights on the first Sunday of Advent. I’ll wait for the full decorations until Christmas Eve.)
Christmas Suggestions
Christmas is a doubly weighted festival in that our dominant culture gives us messages of excessive consumer spending, overindulgence of food and drink, and paints saccharine and unrealistic expectations of family togetherness and perfection.
The church all too often follows the culture, reinforcing the “family togetherness” message. In 2020 Christmas is likely to be a time of deep loneliness and dissatisfaction as cultural and religious expectations (and traditions) run up against doing our duty to keep one another safe.
Remember that Jesus prioritized wholeness, and care for the vulnerable over everything else, including religious obligation and family ties. Jesus’ heart for the vulnerable should be our guiding light through the Christmas season.
- Spend Christmas Eve doing all your decorating. (Until very recently this was the tradition!) Put up the tree, hang wreaths, string out lights! Have fun, savor, call up friends or family and share memories while you all decorate together.
- Do church online Christmas Eve & Christmas Day. Call in to your community’s Zoom, or join a livestream from anywhere in the world. We aren’t bound by geography this year so take advantage of that. (You could work out with your whole family to “go” to the same service.)
- Take Christmas Day off. Don’t get out of your PJs all day (a distinct advantage of online church). Read, eat your favorite food, play! (Enjoy the lack of stress or pressure to be anywhere.)
- Make plans to talk to the people you love and miss over the course of the 12 days. These might be friends, or family. Use video chat, or phone. Play a game online together, get creative in finding ways to connect.
- Now is the time for fun and excitement! Make (ahead of time) a Christmas days calendar with little treats for each day. (No need for a fancy setup, you could hang numbered packages on your Christmas tree, or make a grab bag to pull a treat from each day.) Treats might be small puzzles, games, chocolate, art supplies, riddles, Madlibs, or other silly enjoyable fun. (Remember, this doesn’t have to be expensive.)
- Change up tradition, instead of “traditional” holiday meals on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day cook your household’s favorite food. Mac & Cheese? Go for it. Burgers and tots? Why not. Plan out a special “favorite things” menu for the Christmas season. (And make donations to local feeding programs during this time.)
- Write letters, who are you missing during this season? Write them a real paper letter, put it in the mail.
- Bake. Your body is good, it bears the image of God. God became a body, and seemed to enjoy it! Make yourself lovely things to eat and enjoy. Share them (safely) with people you love! Use box mixed, or from scratch, the how doesn’t matter.
- Get outside. If you live in an area with snow, get out and enjoy it, even if you aren’t a kid anymore. Throw some snowballs, or just wander and enjoy the scenery but a little play does us all good, try it! If you live in an area without snow? Go outside anyway! Take an evening walk and enjoy Christmas lights, wander through the woods, marvel at Creation. (Afterwards, make hot Chocolate from scratch! Boil milk (1 cup), whisk in 2 Tbsp cocoa powder and 1- 2 Tbsp sugar (to taste). Add a drop of vanilla extract, peppermint extract, marshmallows, or whipped cream for extra yum.)
- Add your suggestions in the comments!
For Love
Beloveds we are asked to be more, do more, and become more than we have been asked in the past. Here in the United States we have been fooled into thinking that we are islands, independent and free; and that our freedom removed our obligations to our fellow humans.
But as Christians our freedom is in Christ, our freedom is our love for our neighbor. In Christ we are called to live sacrificially, for the sake of the world. And so this Christmas my prayer for you is that you might meet God face to face in the masked face of each person you pass in the store, or wave to on your evening walk. That you might see Christ in the face of the exhausted nurse, the hospital janitor just come off shift, the solemn eyed grocery clerk.
And that they might meet Christ in us; that they might see in our love, our sacrifice, the way we live for the well being of all, that God so loved the world…
Downloads Section
Advent Weekly Candle Lighting Liturgy
Christmas Eve Liturgy & Family Pageant
Christmas Eve Liturgy (no pageant)
Prayers for Christmas (in progress)