Advent Church: Celebrating St. Nicholas

On December 6th when my anxious nature woke me early, demanding I scrub the bathroom, order my nieces and nephews their presents from Amazon, and address my Christmas cards, I rebelled. Instead, I let my kids dress themselves in sweats, put some coffee in the pot, and opened the front door to a few friends and their kids.

It was St. Nicholas Day. And we were going to celebrate the real Santa Claus.

Now don’t get me wrong, I didn’t throw an actual party. There were no cute dishes. I didn’t send an invitation. My husband was out of town, and my house was anything but tidy. My craft-challenged self failed to make any adorable marshmallow snowmen snacks from Pinterest. And still, it was the most beautiful way I have practiced Advent this season—in community, with simplicity.

A friend brought Santa cookies. I turned on the Christmas tree lights and played our favorite Christmas songs. I gathered the six kids in our living room, read aloud our one trusty book about St. Nicholas, and let the kids dress from the dress-up bin (can you say knight, ninja, and Wild Kratts brother?). We then acted out the story of the saint who secretly gave gifts to those in need because he understood the power of God’s gift of Jesus in his own life.

Following the saint’s example, our friends arrived with boxes full of canned food and trash bags stuffed with clothes and toys to donate. This was a day for our kids to choose what they wanted to give away, to join us at the grocery store and help pick out the cans of food that another family would eat.

For our family, St. Nicholas Day has become an invitation in the middle of the chaos of December—a season that each year seems to grow fatter and fatter with excess and indulgence—to embrace the mysterious gifts of Advent, to prepare our hearts, to practice generosity.

I long for my children to have meaningful rituals in their lives. I long for them to know that Christmas gift-giving is not simply about their own wants and desires and that Santa Claus is not just a jolly man with every toy in the world at his disposal. I want them to believe that Santa is St. Nicholas, a man who loved Christ, who gave sacrificially, who celebrated the gift of Jesus.

And I want my kids to learn generosity within community, to believe that the Church is bigger than our gatherings on Sunday mornings. We are all—as the Church—learning to remind each other of the story of God, the story of our great calling to be light in this world.

“The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it,” John says in the introduction to his Gospel. That is why we string lights around our trees, why we light our candles in the darkest nights of the year.

It is Advent, and we are invited into a bigger story than the parties and the travels and lists of gifts still left to purchase.

What if we—the Church—practice pausing the chaos and let ourselves remember the real Santa Claus, who gave of himself for the sake of Christ, who practiced loving others with action and in truth?

Maybe the more we remind each other of the power of such a calling, the more we will embrace the gift of Advent, the miracle of community and simplicity and the sort of giving that demands something deeper and lovelier than the cash in our wallets.

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Advent Church

It’s not a secret: sometimes it’s hard to find Jesus in church. Some of us have gotten used to the routine and the way things unfold in our weekly church services, and we just can’t seem to move beyond going through the motions. Others of us have been disappointed or we’ve become disenchanted, and we’ve decided to look for Jesus outside the church building. Others have gotten bored with the whole thing, and no longer expect to find Jesus in either the church or the Church. And then, there are those of us who find great comfort and deep meaning in both the church building and the Church of God.

Jesus built the church on Peter’s confession that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of Living God. Jesus pronounced that not even the gates of hell would prevail against it. Christ’s grace is at work in the church. And in the Church. In Advent Church, let’s celebrate the truth that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, and let the Church say, “Amen.”

Featured image by Raphael Goetter. Used with Permission. Source via Flickr.