Richard W. Swanson

Advent is weird. It is a liturgical/theological season with lectionary texts floating in a sea of apocalyptic imagery that we mostly ignore (except when we are convinced that we shouldn’t). And Advent is also awash with Santa Claus, seasonal sales, parties at work with people we don’t like, and meals that we plan for months (only to incinerate them at the last minute). And every year preachers and other quasi-public figures worry in public about which is the “real” Christmas, the REAL Advent. 

I think the answer is Yes. It is all real.

This may be the oddest Advent Prep workshop you ever engage in. (If you have studied with me, this is not a surprise. At all.) 

Advent arrives every year and brings with it a carload of old favorites: biblically, theologically, and culturally. But each and all of those favorites come to us out of a real moment in real time. And those real moments are so often so different from the holiday frenzy in which we encounter them.

In this workshop we will explore the real worlds out of which, and into which, Advent has come, year after year, century after century, millennium after millennium. We will consider songs from Isaiah and Judy Garland, stories from Mark (and Luke and John), and even a speech from Winston Churchill (I told you this would be odd). Together we will explore how Real Time in the Real World could shape the way we tell the stories that we meet every year during Advent and Christmas.