An Evangelical Friends’ Christmas
Ron and Carolyn Myers describe how their Meeting celebrates Christmas with no concern about ‘times and seasons’
Every Evangelical Friends Meeting we have attended considers Christmas a celebration of great importance since it celebrates the birth of Jesus and thus the arrival of the long-promised Saviour. Christmas for Evangelical Friends is a season for personally reminding ourselves that God’s love for each of us is fulfilled in the gift of the Messiah.
The Old Testament prophetic scripture pointing the way to the coming of the Messiah is almost always read with the New testament references, such as Isaiah 7: 14: ‘Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The Virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel’, and Luke 1: 30-35: ‘But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favour with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, his kingdom will never end.” “How will this be”, Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?” The angel answered: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.”’
Many years some form of the ‘Advent’ traditions is followed. This has included a ceremonial lighting of advent candles with focus on traditional themes for each of the four weeks leading up to Christmas. Longing, hope, joy, peace, are all featured, with the fifth ‘Christ’ candle being lit on Christmas Eve at a special service held that evening.
We understand that such an important event should be given several weeks focus so that we do not take too casually the significance of this event in our spiritual lives. On Christmas Eve a popular finish to the service is to use the ‘Christ’ candle to light smaller individual candles held by each person present to symbolise Christ’s light coming to each of us and through us to all mankind.
The Meeting house is always given special decorations during this time. Sometimes only simple festive evergreen garlands are hung. Often a decorated evergreen tree is put up and other seasonal decorations are placed everywhere. Crèches are commonly part of these decorations.
A special program is often scheduled for the Sunday prior to Christmas. This often involves scripture telling the nativity story with songs and tableaux featuring the youth of the church. At times we have had a birthday cake at the end of the program celebrating the birthday of the baby Jesus.
Christmas carols are sung every week during the season since they tell various aspects of the Christmas story.
We also bring food and gifts to be used by our local community Christmas food box project. Our local fire department puts together boxes of food and gifts for hundreds of needy families in our community. Some members of our congregation have chosen to give gifts to overseas assistance projects in place of personal gifts to each other.
The world around us celebrates the holiday too and displays many of the symbols we like to use to remind us of various aspects of the meaning of the birth of that baby in a manger. For all too many people in our country that meaning gets buried in the incredible commercialisation of the holiday – to such an extent that many Christians lose track of the ‘reason for the season’.
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