The War on Advent

[jsburbidge]

Today is Stir-Up Sunday (technically the "Sunday Next Before Advent"), the classic day for steaming plum pudding. I would like to take this opportunity, as the days grow shorter and fake greenery fills the downtown merchants' windows, to take a stand against relatively recent developments in the long-running war on Advent.

Advent is a season of observance with roots dating back to late antiquity, although not as old as the feast for which it is a preparation. It has been watered down somewhat in the last few centuries - it used to be a true fast season, but is now generally treated as a season "of expectation".

Except in some Anglican, Lutheran, and Catholic circles, it has generally had to suffer under a kind of benign neglect. Indeed, it's been more or less under siege for some time. (This is less true in England, where Eric Milner-White's invention of the Advent Carol Service has a larger space in the common awareness, courtesy of the BBC.)

However, a particularly ill-informed assault on Advent has developed in the last few years. Instead of accepting the neutral "Happy Holidays" (and Advent, though not festal, has a claim to be holy) some ill-informed types are aggressively assaulting it by insisting on injecting "Merry Christmas" weeks before its proper time (which is, after all, after midnight on December 24).

This assault should not be tolerated. A suggested appropriate response would be to point out that "it's still Advent", and hand over, as a gesture of goodwill, a song-sheet with "Conditor Alme Siderum" and "Jordanis oras praevia" for their perusal.