Waiting for Christmas (Music)
Sufjan Stevens, Josh Ritter, Ruston Kelly, and songs for Advent
Dear desire of every nation,
Joy of every longing heart
—Charles Wesley, Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus
We wanted to start this edition with “Merry Christmas,” but this week’s Bonus Track on Advent has us, well, waiting. Take a moment with us to press pause on the hustle and bustle. In the spirit of Advent, Mat, Kody, and Adam are considering songs about preparing and longing.
4th of July by Sufjan Stevens (Mat)
Wrong holiday, right? Could any song be worse for Christmas? Nothing wrecks the holiday spirit quite like the refrain, "We're all gonna die." What a bad choice. But this is an Advent swap. Historically, the four Sundays of Advent corresponded to the Last Things: death, judgment, heaven, and hell. The loss, the longing, the grief, the sadness, and, yes, the refrain: "We're all gonna die." This song helps us lean into the grief in preparation for the joy of Christmas. Could any song be better for Advent?
Also available on Apple Music.
When Will I Be Changed (feat. Bob Weir) by Josh Ritter (Kody)
I resonate with this song. “When will I be changed from this devil that I am?” Jenni’s Bonus Track below has me longing for change as I consider the darkness in the world and in my own heart. I’m thankful that, in the words of Todd Snider, “Somebody’s coming” and on that day, I will be (fully) changed.
Also available on Apple Music.
Heaven Made the Darkness by Ruston Kelly (Adam)
Maybe heaven made the darkness
So we could better find paradise
Darkness leading to paradise. Somberness leading to rejoicing. Waiting, longing, and yearning for what is to come. That is Advent. It was an interesting exercise to think about Advent outside of the normal songs associated with the season. I went back and forth on what song to select and I kept coming back to Ruston Kelly. Ruston has a way of pulling deep emotions out that can seem like a cry for help, but hopefully it reminds us why we are really alive.
Bonus Track: For You, O Lord, Our Souls In Stillness Wait by Jenni Goebel
Why would you hold in your hands what you’ve so long been pining for when you could wait for it instead?
A Very Happy Advent1, Music Swappers. We are musically marking this season a couple of sunsets early, but Happy Advent, nonetheless.
Bear with me if you are the Cindy Loo Who of Christmas, because I am going to appear to be a major Scrooge (pardon the mixed literary metaphor) to you for the next few moments you lend this grateful writer: Advent is not Christmas. Advent is a season of waiting and preparation for that glorious day we call Christmas. Once in ye olden days of yore, the world grew quieter for those four Sundays and the weekdays in between. No Christmas candles lit. No Christmas hymns sung. No Christmastime bustling about. Churches and people waited and waited and waited. I have read they did not even say “Merry Christmas.”
Waiting is contrary to this age. It is hard to imagine that time in history when the people who worshipped Christ before Christmas Day did so by setting apart a period of time to prepare quietly, reflectively, somberly, often sorrowfully and darkly for the celebration of His Arrival.
Why grow quiet? Why wait in darkness? Why not party and party and party and eat and drink and be merry?
Sure, sometimes it all feels very festive, but sometimes I just do not know what all this hustle and bustle is about, and my insides do not match all the celebration on the outside. And I feel I cannot do the slowing down that historical Advent invites. Even though I know what this time once was and ought to be and could be, should be, it is now The Year of Our Lord Two Thousand Twenty-Three for St. Peter’s Sake! Maybe once upon a time, the slowing down and the stillness and pondering were possible, but not now. Not in the age of the iPhone and a hundred gift guides. Surely now there is no more hope for a proper Advent. His Salvation of All Things ends thusly here in the consumer economics of my inbox.
Christ pierced the utter hopeless darkness with His very Life, and yet in the feverish want for A More Perfect Exmas2, staged and directed by none other than a mother, but one hardly in the image of the mother of Christ, one who has, in fact, no time to treasure up all these things, pondering them in her heart because she is fretfully bustling about trying her darndest to make Baby Jesus very special to her children and not make too much of Santa, while bestowing a gift of knowing meaning to every receiver, evangelizing her neighbors, managing social invitations with care and consideration of the various circles and obligations, and oh the children! yes, the children! and cookies in the shapes of Exmas things! And all the meanwhile, there have been Christmases full of tears for me, or now there are Christmases full of tears for people I love who have lost. And the merriment just seems so out of place.
The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone.3
There once were a desert people who had a God whom they had not heard from for four hundred years. After leaders and judges and prophets and kings and exiles and returns and running from Him and being restored, there was a terribly quiet silence from God. Then a baby came. The Baby Came. The Promised One. God took on flesh and dwelt among His Own. And as God enfleshed, He died for His Own, He was raised for His Own, and He returned to His Father in Heaven, promising He would come back for us again.
This is why I need Advent before Christmas, not a-whole-bunch-of-Christmas leading up to Christmas. I need the silence, the stillness, the waiting. Not the decorating after Halloween. Not “Joy to the World!”4 on November 30th. I dearly need a period of time to be honest with how challenging it has all been. How disappointed I am that my very best efforts fall short of my hopes and dreams. How grieved I am at how atrocious the sinfulness of sin is and how it upheaves this garden being planted in me. The hustling and bustling make my head spin, yes, but the tragedy of it all is that it keeps me from facing all the fears and hopes in my heart that have received their consolation and realization in the coming of Christ.
This is the glory of waiting. Advent is the time of supplication for Christ to Come. Advent is a time to sense that this is all spiraling out so beyond our mortal control, so dark beyond our deepest fears. Advent is then, that moment that the Christ Child was born to save the people who sat in darkness, and Advent is now, as we wait in hopeful darkness for Christ The Victor to come again. As those who sat in darkness have now seen the light of the Incarnation of Christ, so we, in this anxious age, wait in stillness for the Light of Christ to pierce this present darkness once more.
And so, Advent was given to us by ancient Christ followers who knew it was not time to celebrate Christ’s arrival into His world as a baby before we sat, sat for a good long sit, in the remembrance that we so very desperately needed Christ to come then, and we need Him to come again. Advent reminds us that it was not just dark in the sky, but it was dark in the heart of this world. Where there was sadness, a Joy above all other loves came to us.
In those old days of yore, people finally decorated on Christmas Eve in excitement for the feast coming when they woke the next morning. And it was not all over at the end of Christmas Day. Revelry and merriment and cheer and dancing and feasting and singing for twelve whole days followed Christmas Day. (Twelve Days? Sounds familiar, don’t it?)
The Feast is coming. How great does dinner taste when you are famished? How great is the sand between your toes when you have been chilled to the bone during a working winter? How great is the embrace of your friend who you have not seen in too long a time? How great is the realization and receiving of a hope you have long held on to? How great is that light when it is so very dark outside?
So prepare your hearts room, Swappers. Christ has come, and Christ will come again!
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Jenni Goebel lives in Dallas, Texas, and is a dispenser of laughter, joy, and deep truth to all who encounter her. She’s married to Paul (thanks for the playlist Paul) and has three beautiful daughters. She danced with Paul to Georgia on My Mind, by Ray Charles at their wedding reception and once fell asleep at a Bon Iver concert.
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Happy Advent!
-TheMusicSwap
Advent is the Church Calendar season which spans the four Sundays preceding Christmas. For those who may be less familiar, the Church has a beautiful calendar all her own which follows the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus in seasons called Advent, then Christmas and Christmastide, followed by Epiphany, then Lent, Easter and Eastertide, and Ordinary Time. The Church Calendar may be called also the liturgical calendar or year, or the Christian calendar or year.
Churches may celebrate these seasons only, or may also incorporate Feast Days. Among the many Feast Days are the Feast of the Ascension of Christ and, most recently, Christ the King Sunday, which marks the culmination of the Christian Year and Christ’s sovereign rule over Heaven and Earth.
For more information regarding incorporating the Church Calendar in your family worship and home, check out catechesisbooks.com/products/p/sacredseasons or talk to your most Anglican or liturgically adjacent friend.
C.S. Lewis, “Xmas and Christmas: A Lost Chapter from Herodotus,” God in the Dock (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1970), pp. 301-303.
Isaiah 9:2
Did you know the line sings, “Joy to the world! The Lord is come!” I once thought it said has come because I did not know that in this song, we are singing about Christ’s First Advent and Christ’s Second Advent, also.