It seems that the season of Advent is beginning and I am woefully unprepared! It is fitting in a way as Advent is a time of preparation that one should start out a bit unready at the start.One thing I love about the Church Year is that there are these times of preparation for the major holy days, that we do not go head first from Ordinary time into Easter or Christmas. There is a sense of "getting ready" for something special. And now we are getting ready for the Birth of the Christ Child! And for the new season of Winter Time. Candles and evergreens, chickadees at the bird feeder, old fashioned carols, shepherds and angels, the smell of gingerbread, the crunch of snow underneath our feet, a visit to St. Nicholas, placing baby Jesus in the manger. For little children it is and should be a time of wonder and merriment. There should be joy, awe, and delight in the season.
I think keeping Advent is so important for this. If we move headlong into Christmas right from Thanksgiving, by the time the Twelve Days of Christmas begin on the December 24th, then we risk becoming jaded and tired of the whole thing just as it is starting. Instead of preparing our hearts to greet the Lord in the form of the Holy Infant, we treat it as a month long marathon of shopping, cooking, baking, and cramming in family visits by December 25th. Yet, this is not how Christmas was meant to be celebrated! It is not meant to be a one or two day whirlwind.
Christmas is so important to Christianity that the Church alloted the time from Christmas Eve to Epiphany to celebrate the birth of Jesus. And nearly a month to prepare for the festival! Yet, in our culture, just as the religious celebration begins society stops celebrating. Everyone is sick of Christmas because it has been crammed down our throats since the day after Thanksgiving by retailers hoping to make it into the black.
It used to be traditional to decorate the tree on Christmas Eve and leave it up until Epiphany. Nowadays people tend to decorate the weekend after Thanksgiving. This makes some sense with the extra Friday off. If both parents work it can be difficult to find a time to prepare the house for Christmas. And if you think of Christmas as ending at midnight on December 25th, then the rush to "get it all done" right after Thanksgiving can be understandable. Yet it doesn't have to be like that.
We can keep Christmas holy by keeping Advent holy. We can slowly and mindfully prepare for Christmas by remembering to pause and light our candles, singing O Come O Come Emmanuel each Sunday of Advent. A respite in between the cleaning and the decorating, the cookie baking, and the gift buying. We can limit the amount of "Christmas" in our homes before the 24th of December, slowly unfolding the specialness of the season for our children. Advent calendars are wonderful for little children. Many Waldorf schools and families prepare an Advent Spiral or Advent Garden. Of course, there is the traditional Advent wreath. Some families wait until Christmas Eve to place Mary and Joseph in the stable, and place Baby Jesus in the Creche on Christmas Day. The key is to slowly let the Christmas unfold so to speak.
When I was growing up we always had an Advent wreath we placed in the middle of the kitchen table. On each Sunday in Advent we lit another candle until on the 4th Sunday all the candles were lit and Christmas was around the corner. We decorated the house and the Christmas tree once the 4th candle was lit or a week before Christmas Eve which ever was at least 7 days before the holiday. I remember going out shopping for Christmas presents a week or 2 before not a month or two before Christmas. To help keep old traditions alive I wait until a week before the holiday to listen to Christmas carols, watch holiday movies, and shop. It's my tiny way of fighting the commercialism that can be overwhelming. A little snow helps too. :)
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