advent: our present festival

“This is our present festival. This is what we are celebrating today — the coming of God to man…so that we might return to God…

”So let us keep the feast, not like a heathen festival, but in a godly way — not in the way of the world, but in a way above the world — not as if it were ours, but as it belongs to him who is ours, our Master’s — not as of weakness, but as of healing — not as of creation, but of re-creation.”

— Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 38, on the birthday of Jesus, AD 380.