Why Advent and Christmastime Stimulate a Sense of Wonder
Like many people I enjoy the Christmas season, often called Christmastime, or Advent. I especially gravitate toward the more "enchanted" components that inspire a sense of wonder. God designed people with the capacity to perceive and experience wonder, with a yearning for it even. This is why a sense of wonder is essential to certain kinds of movies, and why they are popular. There are wonderous and wonderful aspects of Christmastime and people can feel it without knowing why. For me and many others there is a sense of wonder that accompanies the whole season, especially at night when there’s been a fresh snowfall and there are twinkling string lights around. I hope you know what I mean. Add to this the feeling one gets while driving through an area before Christmas Day and certain well-known Christmas songs come on the radio, like Silent Night, Sing We Now of Christmas, I Wonder as I Wander, The Little Drummer Boy, the Carol of the Bells, We Three Kings, The Coventry Carol, What Child is This?, and others. It can be simply magical. Another experience many people have had combining these elements indoors is a candlelight church service, especially on Christmas Eve. Or a candlelight vigil. At a certain point the lights are turned off and the hand-held candles are lit one by one, each one from the person next to them, until everyone has a lit candle, while one of the carols above is sung, or perhaps in complete silence. Many who have attended one of these services or events understands the mystique, the charm, the splendor and the symbolism of the collective lights spreading exponentially in a dark place with the music of God filling the air. Here is beautiful Youtube video showing what I mean: http://bit.ly/1hn9dgu.
Some of the wonder has to do with the initial ambiance of winter and the shorter days in northern climates. But there’s something more that’s hard to put one’s finger on. They stimulate a sense of wonder and imagination more than at any other time. That’s actually the point I’m trying to get at: There are things about Advent and Christmas that seem more or less inexplicable. If they don’t defy explanation, they at least resist it. These are the some of the things that I like to explore. For example...
· Why is there such a pervasive emphasis on generosity, goodwill, and peace on earth?
· Why is the Advent/Christmas season the very best time of year for charitable fundraising?
· Why is there such a tremendous emphasis on giving and heightened willingness to give?
· Why do pangs of desire for joy and wellbeing well up in the heart, fulfilled or unfulfilled?
· Why is Christmastime simultaneously one of the happiest and saddest times of year?
· Why do we believe that every child deserves to be happy, at least on Christmas Day?
· Why is there such a compelling urge for togetherness, and to celebrate something?
· Why do we experience an emphasis on intangible things like peace, hope and joy?
There is something wonderful about Christmas, and many people acknowledge it. People long for these things because they’re real, and Christmas captures them for us once every year. Again, I refer to these as self-evident things. It’s self-evident, for example, that people can experience wonder, and they yearn for it, and they need to experience it sometimes. This is even more true with respect to hope, which is related to wonder. People will do many things to hang on to hope, and they live their lives in pursuit of it. Once it’s lost one’s quality of life dissipates with the will to overcome. Depression or even suicide sometimes follows. Nobody argues that hope isn’t real, and that people should learn to live without it, but why is that? Because that would be ridiculous, that’s why. It’s a self-evident thing, a quality, among which there are many others. This can be a great apologetic tool for the Christian faith for those who learn to wield it well. It is a fact that humans need hope and celebrate it, and Christianity offers it uniquely by means of Christmas. This is a very simple and non-theological way of stating it, but it’s true: Christmas offers true and abiding hope because it is the Reality that a God of Hope (light) came into this world to deliver both it and all of humanity from the bondage of a spiritual darkness that ends in despair. That’s what Advent and Christmas are about. I think people sense this whether they are Christians or not. For those who are not it’s a cultural vestige of something lost, or the lingering flavor of something the culture used to believe in, but not anymore.
I wonder as I wander out under the sky
How Jesus the Saviour did come for to die
For poor on'ry people like you and like I;
I wonder as I wander out under the sky
When Mary birthed Jesus 'twas in a cow's stall
With wise men and farmers and shepherds and all
But high from God's heaven, a star's light did fall
And the promise of ages it then did recall.
If Jesus had wanted for any wee thing
A star in the sky or a bird on the wing
Or all of God's Angels in heaven to sing
He surely could have it, 'cause he was the King
I wonder as I wander out under the sky
How Jesus the Saviour did come for to die
For poor on'ry people like you and like I;
I wonder as I wander out under the sky