Advent is a season of waiting. My friend friend the priest (who also writes about Advent, including prayers for Advent) says that we need to be careful not to rush into Christmas too early — and he’s right, of course. As children, we have a waiting anticipation for the approach of Christmas. As adults, it always arrives too soon. We enter into a frenetic pace somewhere in mid-November. We let it creep up on us and slowly build until the week before Christmas when we’re frantically buying one more gift or somebody’s cousin’s aunt or weird-uncle-Hal’s girlfriend from Topeka who announced rather late that she’d be tagging along for the holidays. And the grocery store lineup, and an extra bottle of wine or two… and something a little stronger to help fortify yourself for the season. We know it’s coming, so we put on the Christmas carols about six weeks early. It wouldn’t be so bad if this practice didn’t actually tire us further instead of building anticipation like it did when we were kids wanting to make sure that we had cookies and milk put out for Santa Clause.

This is the season of Advent. Resist Christmas.

Yes, you heard me. This is not yet the time to celebrate, it’s the time to resist. When everyone else is changing “reason for the season,” tell them it isn’t Christmas yet, it’s still Advent. Advent is for waiting. I wrote about the wait of Advent a couple of years ago, remembering the wait of Israel for their promised Messiah. Every year when I think about waiting through Advent, I think about U2, from the Under a Blood Red Sky album recorded live at Red Rocks in 1983. I hear Bono saying, “Sing this with me, this is ’40’.”

I waited patiently for the Lord
He inclined and heard my cry
He brought me up out of the pit
Out of the miry clay

I will sing, sing a new song
I will sing, sing a new song

How long to sing this song?
How long to sing this song?
How long…how long…how long…
How long…to sing this song

He set my feet upon a rock
And made my footsteps firm
Many will see
Many will see and fear

I will sing, sing a new song
I will sing, sing a new song
I will sing, sing a new song
I will sing, sing a new song

How long to sing this song?
How long to sing this song?
How long…how long…how long…

(RSS Readers click through for the video)

Clearly, it’s a classic rock song for Advent. I was listening to it again this week… nostalgic! (And doesn’t Bono look young?) Only through resisting the celebration until it’s time do we appropriately come through the season of waiting, of anticipating. Only then do we experience the joy of Christmas as the celebration of our hope rather than what it’s become to so many — the end, finally, of a long hard season of hectic preparation for a day they can’t wait to be done with so they can relax. That isn’t Christmas — and it isn’t Advent. You think it’s done, but waiting is… well, listen to the crowd sing… “How long, how long? …How long, how long?” Advent is waiting.