Stirring Hope: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Embrace Christmas in November

Dear WRC,

I saw my first Christmas tree this year on October 31. More than a few people have mentioned that theirs went up the first week of November. I’ve been hearing Christmas music in my own house now for weeks. The Christmas creep is real.

I’ve long been one of the voices crying out in the wilderness against the idea of Christmas before Thanksgiving. There are a number of reasons for that, all of which are still valid. Within the Church I’m nervous about the way we’ve smothered Advent out of our lives to get past the uncomfortable waiting and cover it with a thin veneer of cheer. In the marketplace I’m fairly sure the cause of Christmas creep is just greed and consumerism. Within our own psyches I wonder if the desire to have more of Christmas isn’t just a form of escapism by way of nostalgia.

That all may be so, but this year I’m hearing something else in people’s voices when they’re talking about decorating their houses earlier than they ever have: yearning. I actually think I heard it for the first time in 2020 when people put up Christmas lights out of season in order to shine some light into the darkness of the pandemic-stricken world. Something in this sounds like that. Some are people who were fatigued after the election season. Some have spent much of their year dealing with diagnoses and surgeries and treatment protocols. Some are just tired parents who are doing their best to keep up at work, at home, with friends, and with their spouse.

I think each one, though, hung their lights and set up their trees searching for something. They’re looking for something different than their current experience, something deeper and better. They’re yearning for the experience of joy and cheer and rest and grasping after Christmas music and decorations to find it. If it all ends there, then it’s all a bit of a waste of time—inflatable Santa’s and LED twinkle lights make pretty lame idols. But I think we should pay attention to that yearning, because I think we know who it’s reaching for.

C.S. Lewis wrote often about that longing. He referred to it sometimes as joy. In some places he settled on the German word sehnsucht, an inconsolable longing. It was the longing for a far-off country we have never visited or the scent of a flower we have never found. There is something within us that longs for something more and better. In Mere Christianity, he wrote, “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.” It reminds me of what the writer of Hebrews said in commending the titans of the faith, “They were longing for a better country—a heavenly one” (Hebrews 11:16).

What if, instead of policing the boundaries of the Christmas Season, we saw its creep as evidence of our longing for that better country? What if we labelled it yearning and, instead of bemoaning it, learned to coax it into flames? What if we found some ways to point our neighbors past the warm glow of Christmas lights, the joy of hearing their favorite Christmas playlist, and the coziness of a well-appointed mantle to the reason underneath them, to the only one who can satisfy our longings, to the only source of real and abiding joy?

So, from here on out, I say we give up complaining about when Christmas music comes on the radio or when our neighbors put up their lights, and instead make sure not to miss their desperate hunger for Jesus in this season that’s all about him anyway. Maybe we can even join them and, between sips of hot chocolate, tell them about the brighter hope we’ve found.

Merry Christmas, friends! There’s a lot going on this month at church at in your own life. Don’t miss the opportunity to remember what we’re really doing in all of this. Check out the rest of the Bellringer for a few ways to do just that.

In Christ,
Pastor Andy