At Home In Advent

The following words for reflection are taken and adapted from “At Home In Advent - A domestic journey from Advent to Epiphany” from Gordon Giles (BRF - Bible Reading Fellowship). The entire book is available from Eden.co.uk and would be recommended to get a fuller experience of this time of devotion and meditation.

The purpose of these devotional is to give you something of an everyday object or motion which can focus our thinking through Advent. There are 3 sections:

Travelling in Advent
At Home in Advent
The run up to Christmas

We have travelled home, we have made some preparations, and now we settle in for the last run up to Christmas.

Holly, Ivy and Mistletoe: a holy green Christmas

Read: Hosea 14:5 - 9

From decking halls to the sneaky kiss these pieces of greenery have been synonymous with Christmas for generations. I must have felt very Christmassy then at the end of August as I ripped out sack loads of holly and ivy from around the front of the house…. well I didn’t. I felt tired of what is essentially a weed and parasitic plant.

Oh… so not very Christmas spirited of me then? What about Mistletoe? Well it’s poisonous.

And don’t get me started on the fact that each of these things have been used in some sort of pagan worship from time immemorial! Egyptians, Romans, Druids…the lot of them have used these emblems in worship. Mistletoe was considered a fertility symbol and to ignore a kiss was to bring ‘bad luck’ for the next year. Humbug!

Lets calm down a bit. There have been a number of practices and traditions that find their origins in other worship, but as Christians in various cultures we have taken them and let Christ dwell within them. We don’t see ivy as a crown for Baccus or a parasitic weed, we look upon it as part of creation that with it’s green reminds us life is ever growing, and the spikes of holy reminds us of the crown of thorns Christ wore. They are reminders, not idols.

Consider what Hosea prophesied: 14:8. The evergreen fir/cypress/juniper… as we look upon evergreen foliage this year cast your mind to the tree that God promised. It is a tree of hope, peace, love and joy.

Pray when you are surrounded by evergreens. God uses all things to bring him Glory.