The leaves have fallen and the air is finally crisp amidst the defiant, evergreen, Alabama pines. Advent is in the air. The chill as I walk through my neighborhood is a warm greeting within my soul. Walking the pavement of my street is a sort of beating of the bounds. My eyes assess the homes around my own and I notice brightness permeating my once dark walks.
CHRISTMAS LIGHTS.
Throughout the town and neighboring cities where my parish resides, I have noticed something. With each passing year since Covidtide, lights are put up earlier and earlier and by more homes than ever before. I genuinely wonder whether this is a local phenomenon or representative of a trend across our nation. The lights go up before Thanksgiving and now immediately after Halloween, often on All Saints, which is an unknown feast to many Christians and nonbelievers alike.
However, I write not as a grouchy proponent of saving Christmas lights for post-Advent, but as an observer who cannot help but wonder if those who do not follow Christ are setting man-made lights upon their homes because deep inside, they know the world is retelling a lie from hell that the only thing in this life is matter. Perhaps even the most secular materialist cannot help but yearn for the spiritual realm to permeate and penetrate the darkness of old man winter. Could it be that even in the cold hearts of faithless men the Spirit is moving them to deny the cold reality of a materialism-only Christmas, which is really no Christmas at all? Despite ourselves, has post-modernity burned itself out so all that remains is the spark of light hanging upon outdoor shrubbery, begging for meaning?
The brightness of neighborhoods in my community despite the emptiness in the pews tells me that even the unchurched, formerly churched, and self-righteous materialist rejects their own culture of “always winter and never Christmas.”
Read the rest at The North American Anglican.
We see through a mirror darkly 