Favorite Advent and Christmas Reflections

It has been my habit over the years to repost each year popular Advent and Christmas reflections from the blog.

Maybe seeing those posts every Advent season is a tradition regular readers enjoy, like watching It's A Wonderful Life every year. Or maybe it gets old seeing the same posts appear every year. Who knows?

So how about a compromise? One post this year with links to the four most popular Advent and Christmas posts I've written.

Everything I Learned about Christmas I Learned from TV
Perhaps my most viral Christmas post, a playful meditation using the Christmas TV classics How the Grinch Stole ChristmasRudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and A Charlie Brown Christmas to sneak up on "the true meaning of Christmas."

"Watching Their Flocks By Night": An Advent Meditation
Another hugely popular post using research about cultures of honor and violence in herding cultures to recover the scandal of having shepherds standing around the manger.

Christmas Carols as Resistance Literature
Christmas carols as subversive? In this post I talk about two Christmas carols--O Holy Night and It Came Upon a Midnight Clear--to highlight the political commentary in the lyrics. Beyond being shared a lot on social media, this post has been used by churches for sermons and Bible classes during the Advent season.

Piss Christ in Prison: An Unlikely Advent Meditation
An edgy post from the prison Bible study I lead using Andres Serrano's controversial artwork Piss Christ to recover the shock of the Incarnation its message of scandalous, unbelievable grace.

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