Thanks to ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
emperor for this prompt. (More prompts and questions gratefully received here)
I think there are at least three distinct reasons people get grumpy about secular Christmas during Advent, and teasing them apart is the first step in answering the question. Firstly there’s the sense that there is a right and a wrong way to do Christmas, and people celebrating it now are doing it Wrong™, which is even more irritating in real life than on the internet. Secondly there’s the practical annoyance of being invited to lots of parties with delicious foods and drinks that you’ve given up as part of your Advent fast, and finally there’s the emotional disconnect of being surrounded by people celebrating and feasting at a time when you’re observing a penitential season.
The first is probably the easiest to address, and is pretty much covered by the specific phrase of “secular Christmas”. I think that as long as you acknowledge that secular Christmas is mostly a separate thing, which just happens to share the same name due to historical accident, it becomes relatively easy to put this irritation to bed.
The practical annoyance can be addressed in one of two ways - either by adopting Advent disciplines which don’t tend to have much impact on parties, or by viewing the challenge of forgoing elements of the celebrations as an important part of the fast. I think that avoiding this annoyance is not a good reason to choose other disciplines, and that some prayerful self-examination into ones motivation is a good idea, but I personally find that giving up Facebook is a far more powerful way of turning myself towards God than fasting from particular foods and drinks would be in any case (and also doesn’t have the same risks of poking the sleeping monster.)
The emotional disconnect is probably the least tractable, and I’m not sure that I have any good answers apart from prayer, but I’d be interested to hear suggestions from anyone else who’s wrestled with this.
emperor for this prompt. (More prompts and questions gratefully received here)I think there are at least three distinct reasons people get grumpy about secular Christmas during Advent, and teasing them apart is the first step in answering the question. Firstly there’s the sense that there is a right and a wrong way to do Christmas, and people celebrating it now are doing it Wrong™, which is even more irritating in real life than on the internet. Secondly there’s the practical annoyance of being invited to lots of parties with delicious foods and drinks that you’ve given up as part of your Advent fast, and finally there’s the emotional disconnect of being surrounded by people celebrating and feasting at a time when you’re observing a penitential season.
The first is probably the easiest to address, and is pretty much covered by the specific phrase of “secular Christmas”. I think that as long as you acknowledge that secular Christmas is mostly a separate thing, which just happens to share the same name due to historical accident, it becomes relatively easy to put this irritation to bed.
The practical annoyance can be addressed in one of two ways - either by adopting Advent disciplines which don’t tend to have much impact on parties, or by viewing the challenge of forgoing elements of the celebrations as an important part of the fast. I think that avoiding this annoyance is not a good reason to choose other disciplines, and that some prayerful self-examination into ones motivation is a good idea, but I personally find that giving up Facebook is a far more powerful way of turning myself towards God than fasting from particular foods and drinks would be in any case (and also doesn’t have the same risks of poking the sleeping monster.)
The emotional disconnect is probably the least tractable, and I’m not sure that I have any good answers apart from prayer, but I’d be interested to hear suggestions from anyone else who’s wrestled with this.
