What’s the Point of Advent?

What’s the point of Advent in a world that’s already been playing Christmas music since October? Kaitlyn digs into the ancient roots of Advent, why the church calendar begins with longing instead of celebration, and how this season teaches us to live in the tension between God’s promises and our present reality. When we feel the quiet ache from the Christmas season never quite living up to our expectations, Advent helps us understand the true meaning of Christmas better than Charlie Brown ever could.

0:00 - Theme Song

1:20 - Why Do We Do Advent?

3:32 - Christmas Starts December 25?

7:20 - Advent is Somber?

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16:16 - Living Differently from the World

20:04 - A Thrill of Hope

26:48 - The Second Coming

30:21 - End Credits

Clip: Christmas Never Quite Lives Up to Our Expectations — And That’s a Good Thing

Mike: I think it is helpful that Christians really try to celebrate Advent, because I think Advent is potentially a way for Christians to celebrate Christmas differently from the culture. I was thinking about my own family and wondering: if someone looked at how my family is celebrating Christmas this year, is there anything that makes it different from how a non-Christian family would celebrate Christmas? And it’s kind of a convicting question, because I don’t know how much difference there is.

Kaitlyn: Totally. This is where the church calendar is supposed to impose this difficulty on us. I don’t think everyone needs to avoid Christmas decorations until Christmas, like some Christian churches have done throughout history. I don’t think we need to be Scrooge—“We’re in Advent, not Christmas.” But to your point, it should force us to ask: What is most deeply shaping the practices of our families, our communities, even our churches? For a lot of our churches, the way we celebrate Christmas looks basically the same as everyone else. It’s really focused on presents; it’s really focused on family.

This is why I kind of grate against how much family focus there is around Christmas. That makes sense if you’re a non-Christian family. You don’t believe the story of the gospel, but you still want to celebrate this holiday that’s so saturated in our culture, and you’re trying to find some deeper meaning. That’s why most commercials and advertising focus on family.

The Christian story is not about your nuclear family giving gifts to each other and traveling across the country to be together. It’s fundamentally about the family of God—people who are not satisfied with what’s happening now but are desiring what’s promised in the future. Focusing on Advent before we get to Christmas not only distinguishes us from people who celebrate Christmas as non-believers, but also helps us celebrate it better. It helps us ask: What are we actually waiting for? What are we celebrating?

The main note of Advent is waiting for Christ’s return, but there’s also this secondary note: we wait in solidarity with the people of God who were waiting for Jesus to be born. Let’s put ourselves in that mindset. That’s why a lot of the Advent readings are Old Testament prophecies or passages about John the Baptist—“Make straight the way for the Lord.” Could we put ourselves in the posture of not knowing when Jesus was coming the first time? Which is actually easy to do if you remember: I don’t know when He’s coming the second time. And that’s scary, and sometimes we’re exhausted and frustrated, like the early church in the New Testament saying, “Come on—the world is broken, people are suffering and dying. Please come back.”

Remembering that this is a normal experience of the people of God, and that God has kept His promises in the past, helps us wait differently now.

Mike: It’s why I love the song O Holy Night, which I know is very cliché. But I love the line: “A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices.”

Kaitlyn: Yes.

Mike: Because a thrill is temporary. It’s really just a glimpse. When Christ came, it didn’t fix all of our problems. For those 400 years of silence, God’s people were waiting for the Messiah. It’s not like Jesus came and, “Great, here we go!” In fact, many people looking for the Messiah missed Him.

Kaitlyn: Yes.

Mike: And for those who did recognize Him, they spent the rest of their lives being persecuted, and many were killed. They suffered. So that idea of a thrill of hope—a weary world getting a momentary break—they see the future that will one day come when God fully redeems the world. For now, we celebrate the coming of Jesus as a reminder that God has not abandoned us, but it doesn’t fix all of our problems here and now.

Kaitlyn: Absolutely. One of the things I love most about Advent is the reminder that we’re not just thinking about the coming of Jesus as a baby. We’re thinking about the coming of Christ to make all things new. On one level that can sound like bah humbug—“Just be happy! Jesus came as a baby! Why are you dissatisfied?” And yet, as I’ve gotten older, but even as a child, you have all this anticipation for Christmas—you have big dreams about the meals you’ll have, the presents you’ll get, the meaningful family moments. And almost all of us finish Christmas a little bit dissatisfied, often disappointed.

“I didn’t get the thing I wanted.” Or, “I did, but it didn’t make me as happy as I thought.” Or, “We had a sweet time as a family, but the kids were fighting, the ham was burnt—everything wasn’t as perfect as I imagined.” Advent, if we celebrate it in preparation for Christmas, gives us the opportunity not only to direct that longing toward what will ultimately fulfill us—the return of Christ, our reconciliation with God and each other, the redemption of creation—but also prepares us for that moment when things don’t go as planned.

Even if everything goes perfectly, it still won’t be fully satisfying. And we can get to the end and say: Christians are supposed to have a level of discontent. We are supposed to live waiting for something better than anything the world can provide. Even the good gifts—celebrations, family, creativity in gift-giving—are good but will never fully satisfy.

That’s depressing if you think nothing will satisfy you. But if, for weeks, Advent has prepared you to know that everything good is a gift from God but not the ultimate gift, then you can orient that longing correctly.

It reminds me of one of my favorite passages in Scripture, in 2 Peter, when it talks about the return of Christ: “As you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming.” By looking forward to it—by orienting your life toward it—you are, in a small human way, hastening His coming. Advent comforts us in our dissatisfaction, but it also fuels us toward looking forward to the day of God and speeding its coming.

Mike: You’re basically saying: You know how all of us feel like the Christmas season never quite lives up to the hype? There’s a reason for that.

Kaitlyn: Yes.

Mike: And that’s kind of the point—and Advent helps solve that. I was thinking: How can we convince people to fully embrace Advent, especially our low-church friends (which I’m one of)?

It made me recall this embarrassing story. My wife and I got a nativity set years ago at a garage sale.We really liked it. Baby Jesus was separate from the manger.

Kaitlyn: So was he just next to it?

Mike: You would just put him right on top of the manger—there was a spot for him. I liked that. I’ve heard of families who take baby Jesus and hide him throughout the house or move him closer each day. I thought, “This could be fun.” So we used it for a couple years and then… we lost baby Jesus.

I don’t know what that says about my faith or our family. We got the nativity set out one year and we could not find baby Jesus. He was gone. We looked at this beautiful nativity set—99% of it there—and wondered, “Can we still display it? Is that okay? It’s essentially all here… except baby Jesus.”

Kaitlyn: Just kind of the most important part.

Mike: Right. A nativity set without baby Jesus is just a nice farming scene or barnyard scene. And I think for many of us, as we celebrate Christmas, we go through all the motions. It looks like a Christian Christmas celebration should look from the outside. But upon closer examination, you realize—it’s not really a celebration of Christ. It’s a celebration of consumerism and capitalism. Maybe even family—which is good—but still not the reason we celebrate Christmas.

So as we wrap up today: How can we encourage people to really lean into celebrating Advent, maybe for the first time?

Kaitlyn: Like we said, Advent is not just “don’t do Christmas yet.” It’s not being the person who refuses to listen to Christmas music until after Thanksgiving. It’s none of those grouchy things. It helps us be oriented toward the return of Christ—toward what the point of all of this actually is: Jesus coming to be with us the first time and awaiting His return to make all things new.

But Advent also helps us remember—in the midst of a season that asks a lot of work from people, especially those with small kids—you’re working hard to put on a beautiful dinner, decorate your home, find the right gifts. There’s also a lot of good focus on caring for vulnerable people: Salvation Army bell ringers, small groups raising money for charity. There’s beautiful work we can do, and some exhausting, silly work too, but much of it is meaningful.

Not only will it not satisfy you—and that can be good if it leads us to long for Christ’s return—but it can also push us to remember that the whole story of Scripture starts with us waiting for God to act. In the Christian calendar, the very beginning of the story is waiting. We are paused before we get to celebrating Christ’s arrival or doing anything. Before the wise men come, before the shepherds praise Him, before the celebration that requires something of us—we wait. We wait for God to act before we act.

There can be comfort in that during a busy season: spiritually, I’m dependent on God. I am waiting, and I can rest. And when things feel dissatisfying or frustrating—when no one notices the work you did, when the kids don’t like their presents, when no one likes the food you made—it helps to remember that the greatest gifts in life, the most beautiful experiences, are not things you can create for yourself or for others. You receive them open-handed, like a helpless small human, waiting for God to act.

And that can feel frustrating, to feel helpless, but there is also an opportunity to rest in that—knowing the Christian story starts with us waiting on God.