My family’s Christmas traditions don’t all involve hymns. Some involve humanist-leaning feel-good sing-along movies, time travel, jolly red-headed giants, heckling ghosts, and green frogs. Well, ok, only just one of them.
“Tis the season to be jolly and joyous!
With a burst of pleasure we feel it arrive!
It’s the season when the saints can employ us
To spread the news about peace and to keep love alive!”
Yeah, a bit humanist. Thankfully we know how to fill in the blanks.
I love Advent. I love that two millennia ago God Himself was pulled from the womb, cleaned up and wrapped in some blankets, and laid in a rough-sewn wooden trough with some hay that the animals were eating. I love that He entered this world covered in the blood of one of us so that our sins may be covered by the blood that flowed from Him. And more than anything I love the pull in my chest as we sing Come Thou Long Expected Jesus during Advent knowing that we don’t sing of a memory. It is still a very real expectation. O Come, Emmanuel. God with us then, will be with us once again.
Some of my favorite music for the season, hymns and otherwise:
“Silent Night” by Red Mountain Church: Come Thou Long Expected Jesus is such a good hymn, and they do it full justice.
“Sweet Bells” by Kate Rusby: Eclectic selection from one of my favorite artists. Awake Arise Good Christians always makes an appearance at our Advent hymn-sings.
“Behold the Lamb of God” by Andrew Peterson: Peterson is a great storyteller, and here he tells the bigger Advent story, from Genesis through the Gospels with the hope of Christ’s return resonating throughout.
What are some of your must-listens for the season?