Our latest recording for #CafeteriaChristian will reveal, when released, that I am an Advent heretic, so I'll just get ahead of the rumors:

Here's your official invitation to come sing Christmas carols at my church's 10am Sunday worship starting December 1st.

I love, love, love Advent carols. I love them. Give me the minor keys and cold hearts longing for warmth.

I also serve a congregation in America, where "Christmas Season" begins on November 1st.

We can call it a holiday season and pretend we are all very secular and inclusive, but if 95% of decorations are red and green, and lit-up trees, and disappear on December 26: it's Christmas stuff.

(see also: https://twitter.com/TheRaDR/status/1187603108068777985)

A few years ago I realized that most of my congregation does Advent for four hours a week, and the rest of their December is CHRISTMAS ALL THE TIME.

Christmas decorations everywhere. Christmas pop-up events. Christmas travel plans. Christmas stress at work (catering, social work, schools, etc etc etc).

And everywhere, Christmas music.

I no longer felt confident that enforcing Advent Songs Only was conveying some sort of divine and liberating message. What it felt like, in my specific context, was me refusing to know what my people's lives are like. Most cannot opt out of the cultural Christmas grind.

If stores are saturated with Christmas carols, if even the tiniest bit of the "secular" world is better because everyone's on good behavior after re-watching Muppet Christmas Carol - I felt out-of-touch saying "You check that cheer at the door. Here is your mourning-robe."

We get, if liturgical rules are Properly Followed, only three days to sing Christmas carols at my church: Christmas Eve and two Sundays after. Then it's Epiphany.

Two of those days, many people are traveling. The second Sunday of Christmas, when we get it, is already January.

I worried for days on end that the message I proclaimed by being the Advent Police was: "If you want cheer and kindness and goodwill to all men, look to the world. We'll be in here reading apocalyptic literature."

SOUND THE ALARM! ADVENT HERESY!

But I believe this is working for us.

Our liturgy is a weaving of Advent laments (In the Bleak Midwinter for a Kyrie) and Christmas joy (O Come All Ye Faithful to call to communion), a mini-Advent to Christmas arc each Sunday.

We start with a confession of busyness and exhaustion, and our cry for warmth in the cold.

We lean into the multi-dimensional mystery of God born among us, which, truly, I cannot preach fully in just one Christmas Eve sermon.

We go out rejoicing and, I pray each day, a little more awakened to the presence of Immanuel in our ordinary lives.

And truly, we could use that all year 'round.