We have already celebrated New Years. Not the January 1st New Years mind you, but the Christian New Year. With the beginning of Advent (11/29/2009) the Christian New Year began. We have passed from Advent to Christmastide now. Christmas will end after 12 days with the celebration of Epiphany on January 6th. Epiphany will give way to Lent and Lent will give way to Easter. Easter will culminate in the celebration of Pentecost.What follows is called Ordinary Time or Kingdomtide.
Why do I tell you all of this? If you are like the majority of Protestants, you celebrate Christmas and Easter with some vague awareness that Lent falls in there somewhere. However, the celebration of the traditional church calendar year takes the season from Advent to Pentecost to celebrate the entire life of Christ, to once again center ourselves on the greatest of great stories, the whole story of Jesus our Lord. It seems tragic to me that in a misguided attempt to be un-Roman-Catholic, many protestants miss the delight of walking with Christ through his time here with us.
The fear of being too Catholic has driven us away from many wonderful and rich Christian traditions. Instead of shying away from all things Catholic, we ought to reclaim them as Evangelicals and drink deeply of the great tradition in which we all stand!
Merry Christmas!
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thats why i love being lutheran- i was raised recognizing every season of the church:) thanks for the reminder of church seasons! i forget about them sometimes since i worship at a baptist church now:)
ReplyDeleteYeah it's always funny to me how in Bible churches (which i think I'm in) that we religiously observe the Hallmark Calendar rather than the Christian calendar - thus, mother's day message, father's day message, video's for memorial day and veteran's day, etc...
ReplyDeleteBern,
ReplyDeleteI'm with you, it astounds me. we have whole ministries and special services for mother's day and father's day, and birthdays, and independence day, and president's day, and on and on. but you mention epiphany or ash wednesday, or God forbid a saint's day (except for St. Valentine!) to a free churcher and you might get excommunicated!
WOAH! Free-churcher?! You're not on the state-church bandwagon are you? (0;
ReplyDeleteI dunno, the future is optomistic - I find most young people are not so violently anti-catholic, indeed many babies will be spared the fate of their bath-water in the coming years...
i do hope so.
ReplyDelete