Advent Revelation.

in the Latin advent directly translates to 'coming' or 'the coming', henceforth my post means the coming revelation. be it the jolly season of the big fat man in red, pavlova and the generosity of kiwis spending over 1 billion dollars over the past month on presents i thought it necessary to do a little background research. whilst browsing the trade me threads i came across the term 'saturnalia' and a person saying that anyone who celebrates Christmas is deceiving themselves and actually celebrating this event. Saturnalia is the feast at which the Romans commemorated the dedication of the temple of the god Saturn, which took place on 17 December. Over the years, it expanded to a whole week, up to 23 December. this struck me and made me want to go deeper into the origins of Christmas. Christmas is effectively the conjoined term for Christ's mass, hence the reason we give and love in this season because we are massing for Christ and therefore it 'should' be our most humble and holy time of the year for us, however thanks to the hefty and reliable commercialism and consumerist ways of our society, this is not the case. The prominence of Christmas Day increased gradually after Charlemagne was crowned on Christmas Day in 800. Around the 12Th century, the remnants of the former Saturnalia traditions of the Romans were transferred to the Twelve Days of Christmas. so its safe to assume that Christmas is today's most updated and accurate version of saturnalia, however in the same sense it is not celebrating the same thing as saturnalia is. so what is Christmas actually celebrating? firstly it asks us to remember the birth of Immanuel (Jesus of Nazareth) albeit not the actual date (according to the roman and Jewish calendars back then the 'actual' date found by many researchers is august 15) the idea is that Jesus was beyond the worth of a birthday and that everyday was a day of glory for him, hence at the end of the year we take time to look back and thank Jesus for all he is done. in the more practical and simple terms Christmas (to those that don't consider themselves spiritual) is about giving, not for the sake of being acknowledged or for the sake of wanting something in return but simply giving from our hearts, giving from love to those that need to know that we care, those less fortunate. all over New Zealand cities have mission dinners (or lunches) on Christmas day and they only way these events are possible is through the generosity of the city itself (in the form of donations to the food bank and tithes to the ministry (tithe being the donation of money for a cause.) however in saying this we must relise that the idea of giving directly relates to the basis of Easter. Jesus gave his all, gave his life and took all our suffering and pain that we rightly deserve, in taking to much abuse and humbly giving his life to those that wanted it he gave it to all of us, saint Nicholas (more commonly recognised as Santa Claus in today's society) was a bishop of turkey. He was born during the third century in the village of Patara. He had a reputation for secret gift-giving so this is where the idea of giving came from, it came from a christian, therefore in being known for his gift giving the one thing that remained in saint Nicholas' mind was Jesus. so i ask you, and with all discernment.
do you really know what you are celebrating? what is the real reason of happiness within this season?

its a season full of generosity and loving, who are we doing it for? obviously the first answer that comes to mind is each other, but if that be the answer why don't we all sit back and just expect it to be handed to us with a silver lining, nobody asks for presents yet we all conform and think we must satisfy one another with our gifts, we obviously don't do it for ourselves otherwise we would halt presents altogether and dwell in our greed and selfishness, we're not doing it for the other person as they don't ask for anything, so deep down. what is the purpose to it all? why do we continue this ritual known to us as Christmas. effectively it is Christ's mass, regardless of your beliefs and your background, if you partake in the gift giving and the indulgence of lights and festival then we are all really coming together for Christ's cause in life which was to give and to love.

It is the advent of our society.


many blessings and best of wishes for all your holidays to come.

much love

Dan