Advent

The Nativity Fast, in the Eastern churches

The four Sundays before Christmas, beginning on the Sunday nearest November 30; the Eastern Orthodox keep a 40-day Nativity Fast, November 15 to December 24

Its fourth canon says that from December 17 to Epiphany no one should be absent from church. It is often cited as the first Advent. It points toward the January 6 feast, however, and names no season. The Catholic Encyclopedia, writing of when Advent began, says this “cannot be determined with any degree of certainty.”

Gregory of Tours, writing about 590 (History of the Franks X.31), copies the list of fasts and vigils that his predecessor Perpetuus set for the church at Tours, and says the written list is still kept there. Among fasts spread through the year, it orders three fasts a week from the burial day of Martin (November 11) to the birth of the Lord, and a vigil in the church on the night of the birth. This is the first sure record of a fast leading up to the Nativity, more than 400 years after the church began. It does not yet use the name Advent.

De depositione domni Martini usque natale Domini terna in septimana ieiunia.

Its ninth canon orders that from November 11 to the Nativity, the Mass be offered “according to the Lenten rite” on Monday, Wednesday and Friday of each week. It makes the Tours fast (H2) a rule for a council’s churches. Homilies of Caesarius of Arles, earlier in the 500s, mention a preparation, but the Catholic Encyclopedia judges that no general law existed then.

His collection of homilies opens with a sermon for the second Sunday of Advent. The Catholic Encyclopedia adds that several synods set fasts for the season, some beginning on November 11, some on November 15, and others as early as the autumn equinox.

The Catholic Encyclopedia finds no Greek document for Advent before the 8th century. Then it appears not as a liturgical season but as a time of fast and abstinence from November 15 to the Nativity. This is the root of the Orthodox Nativity Fast.

Reduces the season from five Sundays, as listed in the Gelasian Sacramentary, to the four Sundays kept in the West today.

The appendix to its Directory for the Publick Worship of God says no day but the Lord’s Day is commanded to be kept holy under the gospel, and that festival days are not to be continued. Days of public fasting or thanksgiving may still be called for special occasions. Strict Presbyterians who hold the regulative principle still keep no Advent.

Festival days, vulgarly called Holy-days, having no warrant in the word of God, are not to be continued.

The Lutheran pastor sets up the first Advent wreath in the prayer hall of the Rauhes Haus, the home for poor children he founded in Hamburg. It carried a candle for each day until Christmas Eve: large white ones for the Sundays and small red ones for the weekdays. The Rauhes Haus still sets up his wreath each year. Claims that the wreath began in the 16th century or in pagan Germanic custom have no document behind them.

Publishes what the Bavarian business archive calls the first printed Christmas calendar, Im Lande des Christkinds (“In the Land of the Christ Child”). Children cut out a picture for each day and glued it on a card, and Lang wrote a short story for each day. Other dates for Lang’s first calendar, 1903 and 1904, appear in popular sources, and the 1908 date is the best attested.

Answering the question “Should churches observe Advent?”, he gives the position held by many writers in the Churches of Christ: it is wrong to make Advent a mandate for the church, holy days made by men are not authorized, and the Lord’s Supper already remembers His death and points to His return. He adds that the questions the season raises are a chance to teach the gospel. The reader who asked notes that some churches of Christ had begun to observe Advent.

We should not bind anything on the church that cannot be found in some way in the Bible and given authorization by God.

Advent came from the church in Gaul and Spain, as a fast. It is not found in the New Testament, and it is not found in the first three centuries. A preparation for the Nativity could not come before the Nativity feast itself, and that feast is first recorded at Rome about 336 and kept East and West by the end of the 4th century (see Christmas). The Gallic form was a long fast beginning on November 11, modeled on Lent: first at Tours (H2), then by council (H3). A council at Tours in 567 is sometimes cited as well, but its canon orders monks to fast in December and never names Advent. Rome later made it a shorter season of four Sundays (H4, H6), and the Greek churches kept a fast from November 15 (H5).

Historians still disagree on the season’s first purpose. The Second Coming theme and the Nativity theme were joined over time, and how much of each was there at the start is not settled. Either way, the season is the church’s own arrangement, made by councils and bishops.

A preparation for baptism at Epiphany

A preparation for the Nativity

Roman Catholics

Anglicans and Lutherans

The United Methodist Church

Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic churches

The Christian Reformed Church in North America and other Reformed churches

Baptist and nondenominational evangelical churches

Quakers

The Churches of Christ

Strict confessional Presbyterians

Jehovah’s Witnesses

Advent readings and the O Antiphons

Sundays take up the Second Coming, John the Baptist, the prophets and the Annunciation. At Vespers December 17-23 the seven O Antiphons are sung, the source of “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” Read backward, the first letters of their names spell ero cras, “tomorrow I will be there”; whether this was meant is disputed.

The Nativity Fast

The Orthodox keep a 40-day fast from November 15 (H5). In Gaul it was once a fast on three days of the week from November 11, called St. Martin’s Lent. In the West it is now rare.

Advent wreath and candles

Wichern’s wreath of daily candles (H8) was cut down to four, or five with a Christ candle at Christmas. In the common scheme they stand for hope, peace, joy and love. It spread from German Protestants to Catholics and then abroad in the 20th century. Many churches light it in the service; many families light it at home.

Rorate Masses

A Mass before dawn, by candlelight, in honor of Mary. The name is from Isaiah 45:8 in the Latin Bible, Rorate caeli desuper.

The Jesse tree

A family custom from the 1950s, based on Isaiah 11:1 and the medieval Tree of Jesse in church art. A family hangs one ornament a day, each for a person or event in the line of Christ.

The Advent calendar

The first printed one had children cut out a picture for each day and paste it on a card (H9). Later calendars hid pictures, and sometimes Bible verses, behind little paper doors.

Chocolate, toy and luxury calendars

Calendars with chocolates appeared in the 1950s. Toys, cosmetics and fragrances now use the format, and most have no religious content. Fixing the start at December 1 lets a calendar be sold again each year, in place of the movable start of Advent.

The holiday shopping season

Shops celebrate during Advent and stop at Christmas. Churches that keep the season wait and fast in Advent and celebrate in the twelve days after Christmas.

The church’s appointed remembrance is weekly, and it looks both back and forward

The New Testament gives the church one day and one memorial: the first day, and the Supper that proclaims His death till He comes (S1, S2).

The church gathered “upon the first day of the week” to break bread (S1). The Lord gave the memorial Himself, “this do in remembrance of me,” and Paul says what it proclaims: “the Lord’s death till he come” (S2). So every first day already does what Advent is meant to do. It looks back to the cross and forward to His return. Apostolic example binds, and a specific appointment excludes other kinds: the church has no warrant to add a yearly season of waiting to its worship.

The New Testament shows no church keeping Advent, and the record bears that out: the first sure sign of it is a fast set by a bishop in Gaul more than 400 years after the church began (H2), and a council made it a rule in 581 (H3). It began as a fast fixed by the calendar, which no apostle appointed.

Scripture tells of both comings of Christ and gives no season for waiting

The first coming is told in full, and the return is promised; we are to wait for Him always, with no appointed weeks (S3).

The New Testament tells the birth of Christ with joy and the prophecies that went before it, and it promises that He will “appear a second time” to those who wait for Him (S3). The church rightly preaches both on any Lord’s Day, and a Christian does well to wait for Him every day of the year.

But no apostle appoints a number of weeks for this, and Scripture gives no date for the birth that Advent would lead up to. Waiting for the Lord is a life, and the text gives it no season. Preaching the coming of Christ is given; a season of the church year for it is not.

Days are a matter of conscience for each believer, not a law for the church

Romans 14 leaves one believer free to regard a day and another free not to, and forbids each to judge the other (S4, S5).

Paul writes of believers who differed over days: “One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let each man be fully assured in his own mind” (S4). The days at Rome were most likely Jewish days and fasts, so the passage does not set out to approve a Christian season. It does give the rule for a Christian’s own regard for a day: it is between the believer and the Lord, and no one may judge him for it.

So a Christian may keep Advent at home, with a wreath or a family reading, as a way to prepare their heart for Christmas. What they may not do is make it binding on others, or bring it into the church’s worship as a holy season (A1). Paul’s word to the Colossians stands beside this: let no man judge you “in respect of a feast day or a new moon or a sabbath day” (S5).

Paul rebukes those who “observe days, and months, and seasons, and years.” Advent is a season, kept by the calendar.

The Galatians were taking up a calendar as a way to stand right with God (verses 4:21 and 5:4), and Paul fears his labor was in vain. Read in context, the text strikes at any day or season made necessary to please God, and it fits a season imposed on the church as a duty. Scholars differ over whether the days were Jewish or pagan. The text does not, taken alone, forbid a believer’s private regard for a season, which Romans 14 allows (S4). The case against Advent in the church’s worship rests on the New Testament pattern (A1), and this passage is only part of it.

God’s people are to do what He commands, adding nothing. A season of fasting and candles that no one commanded adds to worship.

This was spoken to Israel about the worship God had set out in the law, and it states a principle that holds for any worship God appoints: man may not add to it. The church’s worship is the pattern in the New Testament (A1), and a season added to it is an addition. The text does not reach what a family does at home without calling it worship (A3), and it does not by itself speak to the question of liberty. The inference is sound here because the New Testament gives a specific weekly pattern, and a specific appointment excludes other kinds.

Church-imposed fasts and seasons are human precepts taught as God’s doctrine.

This is a right use where a church binds the season on its members as a duty. Jesus condemns teaching human rules as God’s doctrine. It does not reach a believer who keeps a season of their own, without making it a law (A3).

Christ commands watchfulness for His coming. Advent puts that command into practice.

The command is to every disciple, every day, and the church obeys it in its weekly Supper and its preaching (A1, A2). The text sets no season and no fast. A command to watch always is not an authority for a yearly time of watching, and a weeks-long season can hide the fact that the watching is for every day.

Advent rehearses the prophecies of the first coming, such as the sign of a virgin who bears a son called Immanuel. That is biblical.

The prophecy is Scripture, and Matthew applies it to the birth of Christ. A church may read and preach it on any Lord’s Day. The text tells what God promised; it does not appoint a season in which to rehearse it.

Study

• The Lord’s Supper proclaims the Lord’s death “till he come” (1 Corinthians 11:26). Does it already do what Advent sets out to do?
• The first sure Advent is a fast set by a bishop in Gaul (H2) and made a rule by a council (H3). What difference does it make that the season began as a rule of the church?
• Romans 14:5 says “Let each man be fully assured in his own mind.” How can a family light an Advent wreath at home without making it a law for the church?
• Galatians 4:10 is often quoted against any church season. Read verses 8-11 with it. What were the Galatians doing with days, and does it fit Advent?
• Matthew 24:42 tells every disciple to watch. Does a command to watch always support a season of watching?

Christmas

Epiphany

The Annunciation

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