Light in the Darkness: A Series for Advent Part Two – Shadows
Read Part 1.
As the darkness gives way to the daylight, we notice long shadows—perhaps moving directly upon us.
Shadows have the capacity to unnerve—even frighten us. Sometimes the shadows may be mistaken for something real. At other times, something real may be hiding in the shadows.
Shadows make us uncomfortable. They represent incompleteness and uncertainty—”variation or shadow of turning” (Js. 1:17).
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Drive-thru live Nativities are tailor-made for a COVID-19 Christmas
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“The church’s Lafayette Living Nativity, which Faith has hosted since 1991, may be one of the few Christmas traditions that go off in usual fashion in a pandemic year.” - BPNews
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Light in the Darkness: A Series for Advent Part One – Darkness
Darkness, to our sight, corresponds to silence, in our hearing. It is the absence of any stimulus to inform, direct or encourage us.
But darkness also entails a moral component. Darkness, by its very nature, spreads a covering over sin (see John 3:19-21; 8:12; 12:35, 46; Eph. 5:11-14).
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Why Thanksgiving Is a Cultural “Ebenezer” to Be Grateful For
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“Robinson is not suggesting in his hymn that we all go out and build monuments to God. Rather, as he observes in the next stanza, our hearts are prone to wander and we need touchstones in our lives to remind us what God has done for us individually and, by extension, all God’s people ‘thus far.’” - TIFWE
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C.S. Lewis loved the Incarnation. Not so much the Christmas holiday
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“It wasn’t just the commercialization of Christmas that Lewis disdained. It was the trivialization of the historical event of Christ’s birth. Lewis thought the commercial racket should be detached from the remembrance of what the angels celebrated nearly 2,000 years ago.” - Christianity Today
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Sorry, Halloween isn't worth celebrating
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“Yes, Halloween is big business. Beyond padding retailers’ pockets, it has little to no positive effect.” - Washington Examiner
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Putting the X Back in Xmas
Reposted from The Cripplegate.
I’m all for putting Christ back in Christmas. And there is no doubt that our secularized culture is working hard at surreptitiously ushering the Baby out, without losing the murky bathwater of gift-giving and commercial celebration. But I’d like to address the misinformed concern that the use of “Xmas” as a placeholder for “Christmas” is part of the conspiracy to excise Christ from his holiday.
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Technology, tradition and the invention of Christmas in 19th-century New York
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Given this lead, New York City seminary professor Clement Clarke Moore cemented the connection. On Dec. 23, 1823, the Troy Sentinel published Moore’s “A Visit from St. Nicholas.” Beginning with the now-famous words, “’Twas the night before Christmas…” - RNS
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Christmas consumerism: A symbol of materialism or generosity?
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“But amid the opportunities for creative service and extravagant generosity, competing temptations of materialism abound, threatening to twist our Christmas merriment into a pursuit of self-indulgence or self-gratification.” - Acton
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