I just had an interview with the Wall Street Journal writer who is doing a piece on the "controversy" of Christmas carol singing in Advent (can you believe it?). I haven't ever really hit this topic head on, so hang on, here I go:
Advent is counter-cultural in a culture of immediate gratification... and we seem to have hung our hats on the question "To carol or not to carol?" as the ultimate in expressing the counter-cultural. But I think dealing only with this question is too narrow. The larger question is, "how do we provocatively address in the whole of the worship service the yearning and longing of life–the waiting for something to be born anew within us?" The truth is we all know about waiting–whether we like it or not and whether advertising says we should ever wait or not. We know about waiting:
Waiting for a job...
waiting for a diagnosis...
waiting for the "right one"...
waiting for conflict to end, in our relationships or in the world.
And I believe one of the most important tasks of our ritualizing is to sacralize our experience and understand the holy at work in the midst of it. So for me, this carol question isn't the main question that ought to drive our preparations for the spiritual journey of Advent. If that is our obsession, it may be we are stuck in "plug 'n play" mode of worship planning where larger questions don't get any attention.
But... since we are asking the question about carols in Advent, a couple of thoughts about it.
It does feel odd to hear Christmas songs (and not all Christmas songs are technically "carols") everywhere EXCEPT church during Advent. It is human nature to question this.
Churches themselves, regardless of their carol practice, have shifted the Christmas season to before Christmas... choirs do their cantatas before Christmas, we put up Christmas trees in the sanctuary before Christmas... we have our Christmas activities and even door-to-door caroling before Christmas. And the nativity scene goes up before Christmas. So holding out one little thing like singing carols during Advent seems like an odd "hold out" considering these other things that we wouldn't dream of banishing.
Actually, the ancient church's celebration of the birth of Christ occurred on Epiphany. It wasn't until the 4th century that Rome set what we know now as Christmas. But still, Epiphany remained an important date–a time to celebrate the visit of the Magi (yep, we are still in the manger at this point) and a time for baptisms. For some Christian traditions, such as the Orthodox Church, Epiphany is still a highlight. But not so for most American Protestant traditions and so we have Christmas Day as something that feels like the "end result" with no time to continue to sing the carols of Christmas beyond that. Reclaiming the "Twelve Days of Christmas" is one way to move toward more time to sing that repertoire. However, that is also counter-cultural (both secular AND religious culture) and not an easy "fix."
The second aspect I would bring up is that my research dealing with the neurophysiological factors for how we react to various worship expressions suggests that what we crave about "the familiar" has a more kinesthetic sense–it "feels" a certain way–the rhythms, tempo, melodies (which is much more about the tunes than the content) is what evokes the memories and sentiment of the season for us. This leads me to a couple of ways to deal with carols during Christmas: 1) marry Advent texts to carol tunes; 2) use carol tunes as instrumental music for gathering and leaving. I do, however, think that we are complex enough to actually be able to sing a carol AND steep in the "waiting" aspects of Advent in the same service (with good, intentional design and leadership).
Many churches have begun to do what they call "compromise" and that is to incorporate one Christmas song in the worship service during Advent, or begin singing carols on the 4th Sunday, or start Advent singing even before Advent (which is the suggestion on the GBOD site) or have a prelude time of "by request" singing of Christmas songs before the Advent services begin. All of these are valid ways to deal with the obsession about this question. But I return again to the bigger (and I think more important) question, "how can we more provocatively offer worship expressions during Advent that don't hinge on the 'to carol or not to carol' question but rather sacralize the complexity of our human experience in ways that draw people into a spiritual journey of the longing and yearning of life and how that is met with divine light.
