Angela and I love Christmas. When I say we love Christmas, of course I mean the fact that it is the birth of Christ and the celebration that surrounds it, but I also mean that we love everthing that goes along with the Christan connotation. We love lights and trees, tinsel and ribbon, and we love hot coffee and family traditions. One new tradition in many homes is the Elf on the Shelf. Anxious for traditions and consumed as we often are by our own impulsiveness, we bought an elf several years ago and then cringed when we began to read about the elf. He is constantly watching you and taking reports back to Santa.
We don’t really do Santa in a big way at our house and the concept of someone always watching over my shoulder to discipline me does not seem very encouraging. We never took the elf out of the box and today it is happy on someone else’s shelf. However, in our search for a new Christmas tradition, we talked with our old friends, the Blanchard Family, and were introduced to the Advent Buzzard. I’ve copied the link to Carrie’s origninal blog post that deals with said buzzard, but suffice it to say, this is a tradition that we are excited to begin in our home. Here’s the way that Carrie explains the Advent Buzzard:
As the tale goes, once upon a time, some preacher person (likely fed up with secular holiday traditions) hung up a homemade buzzard (originally constructed from men’s dress socks) in a prominent place in their home. His purpose was to remind their family of sin, evil, and distractions that surround us every day that draw our attention away from Christ, especially during the season of advent when we should be looking and waiting for Him. Any time you pass this buzzard, you are supposed to whack him and say something like “I renounce the powers of darkness and look for the coming light!” Thankfully, the children of the family shortened this to “Jesus is coming you old buzzard!”
Yes, sin is lurking around many corners to rob us of our joy and steal the focus of Christmas away from Christ. The buzzard of Christmas is not alwys ugly and scary, often it is beautiful and dazzling, but regardless of its look, its purpose is the same–stealing glory from Christ. Join with the Blanchards and the Thompsons this year and get your own buzzard (There’s an Amazon link here) to remind you and the rest of your family that Christ has come and is coming again, and when he arrives, death will be no more, there will be no more pain, no more tears–THE LIGHT HAS COME!
This is an old medieval custom–they actually hung a dead buzzard in the staircase and left a stick nearby. When you went up or down the staircase, you gave the buzzard a thwack and said “I cast off the forces of darkness and gird myself with the armor of light!”