Christmas lights are going up in our neighborhood. I suspect they are in yours as well. Pretty and colorful, I wonder why that tradition began. I wonder if it had something to do with this need we have to make everything pretty and perfect. Putting up our bows and our ribbons, is it because we believe that God’s arrival must always be beautiful?

Strange when we imagine the smelly stable and the screams from Mary’s pain.

"Don’t be afraid," the angel says to Mary, "for you have found favor with God."

Some favor.

The favor of that unhygienic barn. The favor of a son who rejects her several times. The favor of watching him die a horrible death.

Some favor.

But this is the purpose of Advent, to peel away the prettiness, the phoniness, the masks that seek to hide us from each other and from God.

Advent is an honest time. A time to ask ourselves if we really do want to see Jesus, to reach out and touch him, to hear what he is really saying.

Like it or not the Christian journey does not lead to a lovely Christmas tree surrounded by presents but a lonely cross on Calvary.

Is that what we are trying to hide from with all the twinkling lights and pretty ribbons?