From the editor

In the past I wrote about the importance of not singing about Christmas during the Advent season. But I am changing my mind. Singing Christmas hymns and carols need not diminish the meaning of Advent.

Some Mennonite congregations and their leaders feel strongly that only Advent songs should be sung during the four Sundays before Christmas. This relegates Christmas hymns and carols to the 12 days after Christmas. But there are reasons to change this practice that has come into congregational life over the last two decades:

• Families often vacation during the holiday season, and the children are not in church. We may be raising a new generation that does not know the words to “Away in the Manger” or “Silent Night” when we do not sing them before Christmas. Further, they will hear the instrumental versions in shopping malls and stores and associate the melodies primarily with a secular Christmas. It will be a great loss to the future church if members do not have an emotional and spiritual connection to the songs we sing a cappella and in four-part harmony.
• Worship planners often want the morning’s songs and hymns to connect with the sermon text. There are far fewer Advent hymns than Christmas hymns from which to choose when the sermon is preached from the Advent text.
• Christmas carols and hymns are in our psyches. They provide the emotional and spiritual field for the way we experience the season. Case in point: The words of “Joy to the World” are not about Christmas. In fact, the song is not even in the section of Hymnal: A Worship Book designated for “Jesus’ Birth.” Yet we seldom sing this song at any other time of the year because it is so ingrained in our psyches as a Christmas carol.

For congregations grappling with this issue, here’s a compromise: Observe Advent the first two Sundays after Thanksgiving and then begin celebrating Christmas the last two Sundays.

Why not just spend all of December singing Christmas songs? Because it is important to remind ourselves of Mary’s experience as she waited for Jesus to be born. On page 8, Isaac Villegas’ Grace and Truth column describes the importance of this pregnant pause each year. For congregations that do not observe the Advent season at all, leaders might consider doing so at least on one Sunday.

While some congregations may have observed the seasons of the church year before the 1990s, I recall the practice spreading quickly during that decade. And I am grateful for the change. Cycling through the biblical story each year has deeply enriched our worship life: When the preaching follows lectionary texts during the church year, more of the Bible is preached than happens when there is no structure.

But we need not lock ourselves into the seasons of the church year, especially when doing so diminishes our worship because we sing no carols and Christmas hymns.