Keeping Advent - and Christmas

Pastor Mark Morgenstern, pastor of Atonement Lutheran Church in Billings, Montana, included the following letter to the congregation in their December newsletter. While I don't always manage to read even a fraction of the newsletters from other congregations that come across our desks here at CtK, I do try to skim at least some of them.
Much like Pastor Mark, I get frustrated by the commercialism of the season in our country, and by the strange defensiveness that some of our brothers and sisters in Christ display during the days before Christmas. I, for one, need to be reminded to slow down and wait, watch and prepare for Christ's coming - not just as a baby, but today, and at the end of time. People get ready! Jesus is coming!

From Pastor Mark (whose wife, Maryann has a non-congregational call):
Last week Pastor Maryann shared an e-mail that she received at work. It was a poem to the meter of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas. While I don't remember much of the poem, the writer moans and groans about how the government, the politicians, the ACLU. the public schools, the department stores and all those who promote political correctness are taking Christmas away from "US." I am assuming that the "US" are the good religious Christians in America. My intial reaction was to simply write this poem off as not worthy of my attention. The more I thought about it, however, the more frustrated I became with the author's point of view. You see, I don't think anyone can take Christmas away from us.
I've written before about Christmastime that my family usually refers to me as Scrooge because I get pretty cynical when it comes to the commercialization of Christmas. I must admit my alarm two days before Halloween when I was looking at Halloween stuff in Wal-Mart and heard the speaker system in the store playing Christmas music. This year I've gotten pretty sarcastic about the fact that retailers are so worried about the economy that they are moving Black Friday (you know, the Friday after Thanksgiving Day - the biggest shopping day of the year) up a week so as to try and make more profit. Who knows, before too long maybe Black Friday and Halloween will be celebrated as one big buying and begging day on the thirty-first of October! See, I told you I'm pretty sarcastic! But seriously, nobody can take Christmas away from us. We can only give it away when we give in to all the pressure to turn Christmas into the economic savior and allow the hubbub of the separation of Church and State get to us.
For example, we may not be allowed to sing religious Christmas carols at the school Christmas pageant, but no one can keep us from singing religious carols at home in the shower or at the dinner table, in our cars as we drive around town and look at the Christmas lights, or out on a mountain trail hunting for a Christmas tree. The big "box stores" (I won't mention any names) may tell their employees to say "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas," but no one
can keep us from replying to them with a cheerful "Merry Christmas!" We could even add a "Jesus loves you!" and we won't get arrested. Removing the creche from the lawn of the County Courthouse can't keep us from making a place for the baby Jesus in our hearts or in our homes. They (whoever they are) cannot take Christmas away from us.
Advent, the last two days of November this year, and the first 24 days of December are the time for us who strive to follow Jesus as his disciples, to get ready to celebrate his birth again. We can use these days as a time to fill our lives and our homes with the good news that God loves us so much that God came among us in Jesus so that we might know and experience God's forgiveness and love and live with the assurance of eternal life. We can use these days to read again the story of Jesus' birth in the gospels of Luke and Matthew. We can sing our carols at home around the dinner table. We can find ways to give of ourselves (as God has given God's self to us) rather than allow the culture around us to deceive us into thinking that spending more money on a gift means more love. As we seek to fill the 26 days of Advent with Jesus, we will come to Christmas moring blessed and we will have kept Christmas well!
God's blessings to you all - and Merry Christmas! Jesus loves you - that's what it's really all about.

How are you keeping the season of Advent this year? More tomorrow on ways to celebrate this season...