Advent

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought for you are not ready for thought.
So the darkness shall be light, and the stillness the dancing.
T S Eliot, "East Coker," Four Quartets

Thanksgiving, with all its glorious gluttony, has passed and we have endured Black Friday and “Cyber Monday”, with their extreme deals and orgies of shopping. Most malls had the their decorations up in mid-October. They barely waited until the Halloween-themed goodies were on special before starting up the Christmas music and the red and green staff outfits. I am already caught between the disgust of overwhelming “holiday cheer” and the panic of knowing that I have 7 adults and 3 kids in the family to produce presents for on a limited budget and any number of friends who deserve holiday surprises as well. Most things have to be mailed and I’m already behind. This is not the way I remember the holidays from my childhood. This is not how I want my son to remember them either.

Christmas was always a favorite holiday in our house. And the lead up to the holiday was as important as the holiday itself. The season always started with a party at church on the first Sunday of Advent. We sang the first verse of “O Come Emanuel” and made our yearly Advent wreath (and hoped we would be able to keep the candles upright and not set it on fire). The wreath lived at the center of the dining room table until the Sunday after Christmas, getting drier and more flammable with every passing day. Each Sunday we would light a new candle and sing a new verse of the hymn in church, watching the weeks pass by.

There were visits to Santa, packages arriving by mail, rehearsals for the Christmas pageant , either at school or at church or both. While my grandmother was alive, there was a gingerbread house every year, that arrived a week before Christmas and sat, untouched and admired, until Christmas Day. And there were Advent calendars. Sometimes we had the kinds with pictures, sometimes we had ones with chocolates and one memorable year, we had one that had tiny ornaments inside. They sat on the mantle and we dutifully opened one door each evening before bed, to reveal what was inside. It was magical and important and hopeful.

Today, the holidays inundate us from Halloween until New Year’s. We can’t seem to escape them. There are TV commercials and TV specials and civic decorations. People put inflatable Santas and snowmen on their lawns. I even saw a light-up pig dressed in a Santa outfit at Sears over the weekend. Everything is covered with lights the day after Thanksgiving and stays that way until the day after New Year’s. And I can’t help wondering, with Christmas dominating our every waking moment (even if you don't celebrate it), what happened to Advent?

I’m not Christian anymore, but that doesn’t make Advent any less important. Whether you are Christian or Pagan or Jewish, we are all waiting for the Light to return. We are seeking the miracle of rebirth in the dead of winter, that hope of Peace on Earth. And a season of Advent is the gentle ramping up to joy. It is the slow climb of anticipation and it is missing from our on-demand world. The modern Christmas song that says “We need a little Christmas, right this very minute,” is the anthem of a world that has forgotten to appreciate the power of patience.

My family won’t be decorating any time soon. I was raised with the more British tradition of trimming the tree and decorating the house on Christmas Eve and leaving those decorations in place until Twelfth Night. And for now, that tradition will remain in place. Once we are no longer sharing living space with my mother, we will most likely switch our decoration day to the Solstice, to include both holidays in the celebration. We will wait and let the anticipation build. An advent wreath is out the question with a 3 year old in the house, but this year we will do some kind of advent calendar. Something he can open each night and see the tiny miracle inside. And hopefully it will help him understand that we are all waiting for the greater miracle, right around the corner.