Welcome to Curiously, Caitlin, where we try to make theology make sense.

I don't know.

That doesn't make any sense.

Curiously, Kate, yeah.

Welcome back to Curiously, Caitlin. I am joined again by producer Mike. Mike, how are you?

I'm great. Caitlin, how are you? I am so good. Seth, who edits all of our podcast, was just pointing out that we are wearing, if anyone's watching online, coordinated Christmas colors. We are. Unintentionally. Unintentionally, green and red. And we've got a

fire. You don't have a drink, but I have like a fancy seasonal chocolate coffee. So I'm just like in

the mood for Christmas. It's that time of year. And you know, so often the Holy Post is accused

to being grumpy, maybe like grumpy old man takes.

Totally.

Which is fair, but I think we need to be the ones that bring about some Christmas joy.

As the two that are not old men.

Exactly.

I'm quickly getting there, but I still got a little bit of time.

So we have another, on that note, we do have another Christmas or Advent related question. And this one, I mean, it gets right to the point. I love this question. There's no messing around here. So here is today's kid question. Why do we do Advent? Why do we do Advent? Straight up. Why do we do Advent? What's the point? I love, we do this a lot on the show where we're like, I wonder what made a kid think of this?

Now, I'm not going to be naive here. I would not be surprised if a grown-up asked this kid. Like, do you have a question about Advent? And they were like, yeah, what is up with that? But I like to imagine there are kids who ask about Advent because they're at a church that might take Advent a little more seriously.

Maybe like my church in the Chicago area. kids who ask about Advent because they're at a church that might take Advent a little more seriously.

Maybe like my church in the Chicago area, we don't have any Christmas decorations up until Christmas.

Maybe you're at a church that makes a point of only singing Advent hymns that are sometimes, you know, there's some overlap with Christmas songs, but they're very oriented towards longing for Jesus to come. They sound kind of sad. Sometimes they sound really sad. They can be kind of, yeah, dour. Like Ocome, Ocombe Emmanuel, classic Advent song, not a lot of energy or pep to that one. No, no. You'll notice sometimes you can distinguish the Christmas from the Advent songs, at least in the broader culture because the Christmas songs are like, you know, so peppy and it's about like joy and

presents and snow. And then you've got like these very serious somber Advent songs. So I imagine

a kid in a church that's taking Advent really seriously might be going, okay, at church, we sing

these somber songs and we maybe don't have

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