“The Advent season plays out against the backdrop of a materialistic culture at its gaudiest, most materialistic, most vulgar; the season’s advertising will appeal to the least attractive human characteristics — greed and pride and our need to affirm ourselves by what we buy and consume.
Advent responds by reminding us that a child will be born in the midst of a world and a time very much like our own, that the reconciliation and redemption his birth promises is not separate from the world, and that he will call us to follow him and be his people to this same sad, greedy, vulgar and beautiful world. His birth, which dark Advent anticipates, will be a light in the darkness that darkness will not overcome.”
John M. Buchanan, pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago, Illinois, and editor/publisher of the Christian Century, from “The Editor’s Desk,” November 29, 2011