Advent is the four-week lead-up to Christmas, which helps us to celebrate Christmas not as a day but as a season. Advent means “coming” - and so Christmas is a season in which we literally re-enact the anticipation of the coming of the Messiah with millennia compressed into weeks. While our culture has added many ornaments to it, at it’s heart, Christmas is a celebration of the advent or coming of the Messiah, so that God is now Immanuel - or God with us. Americans typically enjoy a tree and music and food and of course gifts to celebrate the advent of the Messiah. As Christians, we can utilize this season to remind us not only of his past advent, but his future advent.