The Advent Overture: Meditations and Poems for the Christmas Season

What Has Straw to Do with Grain?

Let’s make bricks … it was called Babel … Let the one who has my word speak it faithfully. For what has straw to do with grain?

(Genesis 11: 3-9; Jeremiah 23:28)

Babylon

Mortared aspiration

Straw-bricks skyward vaulting

Heaven’s gate assaulting

Man’s oven-ready lust is kilned in vain

And cannot entrance into glory gain

Bethlehem

Mangered incarnation

Straw-stalks earth-bound lying

Heaven’s access crying

The kerneled wheat in swaddling husk was lain

Consider … what has straw to do with grain?

Unless a kernel of wheat falls into the ground and dies it remains alone. But if it dies it produces many seeds.

(John 12:24)

(1985)

First Things First

The observance of Advent is a Christian practice that celebrates the incarnation: the fact that Christ was born, the truth that God became man. However, ‘adventus’ (Latin for ‘coming’) has always been associated with both the preparation for celebrating incarnation, as well as the anticipation of the Parousia, the Second Coming of Christ. Liturgically, Advent has a long history. Some historians argue that the first mention of it can be traced to the Council of Sargossa in 380AD, but by the time of the Council of Tours (563AD) and Mâcon (581AD) liturgical practices for Advent are assumed given the practical suggestions for advent preparations that were presented at these gatherings.

The Gentile Christian celebration of Advent has well-known traditions that have been influenced by any number of pagan Gentile ones. The Christianization of a pagan festival inevitably involved the adoption of some of the original features. For example, the history of the Christmas tree, though it includes suggestions that it developed from the Paradise Tree in the Garden of Eden, is most likely the evergreen fir that was commonly used in pagan religion to celebrate winter and the winter solstice. The Romans used it to decorate their pagan temples at the Festival of Saturnalia, the false worship of their deity Saturn. It is strongly argued that the reason that Christians chose December 25th was because it was the birthday of two powerfully opposing false deities: Zeus the Greek god, and Jupiter the Roman one.

Christmas, for obvious reasons, is clearly not a Jewish celebration. The seasonal Jewish feast that is closest to Christmas in timing is Hanukkah, celebrating the re-dedication of the Second Temple after the Maccabean Revolt against the blasphemies of Antiochus. It happens sometime between the end of November and the end of December because it is based on the lunar calendar, so Hanukkah cards and Christmas cards can always be found in stores at the same time. Like Christmas, it is has a strong family appeal, and involves candles (thus also known as the Festival of Lights) and there is also the exchange of gifts. Like Christmas, when we pray the Christmas Collects, it has particular prayers to express thanksgiving, one of them being the ‘Al-ha-Nissum’ (‘about miracles’). The opening words could well be those of a Christian prayer of thanksgiving for Yeshua’s birth: "We thank you also for the miraculous deeds and for the redemption and for the mighty deeds and the saving acts wrought by you."

So what is the point? Sadly, precisely because Christmas is Gentile, most people are likely to go through Advent season without so much as a thought for a fundamental incarnational truth. Read the following from the birth narratives and you will understand: "A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham … He will save His people from their sins … Where is the one who has been born King of the Jews … out of you will come a ruler who will be the shepherd of my people Israel … The Lord will give Him the throne of His father David and He will rule over the house of Jacob … He has helped His servant Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever … Praise be to the Lord the God of Israel because He has come and has redeemed His people Israel … to remember His holy covenant, the oath He swore to our Father Abraham … in the town of David a Savior has been born to you … to offer a sacrifice in keeping with what is said in the law of the Lord … for glory to your people Israel … the child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel" (Matthew 1:1; 1:21; 2:6; Luke 1:32; 1:54-55; 1:68; 1:72-73; 2:11; 2: 22-24; 2:32;