It’s Saturday a few weeks before Christmas, 1962. My father left for good a month ago. He’d been leaving for years, actually. In and out. Back and forth. Returning home to offer promises that would soon break on the rocks of marital dissension.

Thanksgiving was sad.

Christmas would be bleak.

So, my sister packed us up, my big brother and me, in our ill-fitting multi-generation hand-me-down winter jackets to make the trek through the December cold to the Methodist church that sat among the Protestant cluster across town. This is the church where, in better times, I had wet the preacher as he baptized me; a church happy to welcome into their fold this “good family” led by a handsome aeronautical engineer. This was also the church that would count my oldest brother among the volunteers who fought the fire that would destroy it in later years.

Hoping the Sunday school Christmas party would brighten the holiday for her younger siblings, my sister trudged us through the snow and across the windy bridge until we arrived at the little white church. Huffing into my hands and shivering off the cold, I looked up to see the Sunday school director marching determinedly toward us. Hands on hips, she advised my sister that unless we were regularly active in the Sunday school, we had no business attending the party.

So, we headed back home with heads lowered against the winter chill that now penetrated our souls as well as our frayed coats. Our pockets empty of everything . . . except shame.

I have often wondered where the Christians were when I was growing up. Where were they when I sat at my school desk suffering from an abscessed tooth and no hope of dental care? Where were they as my mother choked back pride and tears to call social services only to find that because we “owned” a mortgaged house and a car, we weren’t eligible for help? Where were they when I lay awake praying as hard as I could that that car—the one whose door had to be tied shut with a rope—would start so mom could make it to third shift at the factory?

I don’t know where they were.

I wish I could say I don’t know where the church people were. But I do. It’s a truism, of course, to say that there is a distinction between church people and Christians. Sometimes they overlap, but not always. I found church people in lots of places—in the Methodist narthex missing the irony of sending poor children away from a party that celebrated the birth of the Christ child into a poor family; in the office of the elementary school principal (a Baptist) who thought the best way of handling children was with humiliation and a paddle; on the way to school when a neighbor yelled, “You kids should have boots on!” then shook her head in disgust and slammed the door when we called back, “We don’t have any boots” (she was Catholic); and in the kitchen of a friend whose Congregational aunt insisted that if her son had been protesting at Kent State, she would have wanted him to be shot.

While a friend’s recent pronouncement that it is not the suffering in the world, but rather church folks who are the strongest argument for atheism may be extreme, hypocrisy remains one of the top reasons people cite for avoiding institutions (and people) that call themselves “Christian.” It is sad to live in a fallen world with its cruelty, hatred and violence. It is a far greater tragedy, though, when those who claim to know the Light, choose not to be the light. And that has been the case far too often throughout church history.

In the Western tradition, Advent is a season of anticipation and preparation for the celebration of Jesus’ birth and for his awaited return. Although liturgical scholars sometimes argue the point, Advent is commonly associated with purple as a penitential season. It is the ideal time for people and communities of faith to ponder how often we have denied Christ through our actions.

How often have we left people wondering if a God with the power to conquer death can really exist when those who proclaim such a deity have unconquerable selfishness and hatred? How many times have those desperate for the touch of a loving God felt only the slap of judgmentalism and condemnation? How frequently in recent months has the response of church folks to reports of terrified children imprisoned in warehouses been “Well, they shouldn’t be here anyway!” How common is it for worship to be followed by a “fellowship time” of recourse discussions about the neighbor who parked in the church parking lot without permission, arguments over how the lawn was cut, or outrage that the pastor moved a cherished decoration so she could see the congregation from the pulpit where she shared the (supposedly) cherished word of God.

If we want to keep Christ in Christmas, we would do well to keep the purple in Advent. Yes, we prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus. Yes, we anticipate the return of Christ as king. But the king arrives with questions on his lips: “Where were you when I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat? Where were you when I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink? Where were you when I was an immigrant and you did not invite me in? When I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, when I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me?” (see Matthew 25:31-46)

It would serve us well this Advent season to heed the admonition Thomas Merton penned seven decades ago:

“Do not be too quick to assume that your enemy is an enemy of God just because he is your enemy. Perhaps he is your enemy precisely because he can find nothing in you that gives glory to God. Perhaps he fears you because he can find nothing in you of God’s love and God’s kindness and God’s patience and mercy and understanding of the weaknesses of people.

“Do not be too quick to condemn people who no longer believe in God, for it is perhaps your own coldness and avarice, your mediocrity and materialism, your sensuality and selfishness that have killed their faith.”

Get your red and green, and silver and gold ready, but for these four weeks, keep it purple.