We lament the Christmas Season beginning earlier and earlier these days. What we usually reference in this complaint is the commercial aspect of Christmas and the pressure to buy, buy, buy beginning even before Thanksgiving. Christmas decorations go up in some stores the day after Halloween!
I feel the same way. However, this year on the heels of a lengthy pandemic that continues to lay bare the ways we live in a world that has grown dim with injustice, isolationism, and oppression, I remember that Christmas is not merely about December 25th. The Christmas Season does in fact begin right after Thanksgiving with the first Sunday in Advent, which was November 27th. What is more, the spirit of Advent cannot be purchased in a store.
Advent is about attentive waiting and active preparations for the arrival of God, or a savior, or a peaceful reign on earth. Advent reminds us that Christmas is not just about one day of celebration after the event we have long waited for has arrived. It is also very much about the journey that will bring us to that moment.
The journey of advent means opening our hearts and making room there for belief. If we do not dare to hope that this world filled with flawed human beings cannot be turned towards a redeeming love, then we will surely miss the miracle when it arrives. We shall greet the child born with a pure and radiant love and counter that love with fear and nay saying.
The journey of advent means exercising our own minds, hands, and feet in service of justice. If we do not dare to act on our own heart’s impulse to love this world fiercely through daily deeds of compassion, resistance, and hope, then the miracle may not happen at all. The child that is born will not find companions who are ready to give up on complacency, selfishness, and destruction, and their leadership will fall on closed hearts.
It is a journey of longing and becoming, of softening and strengthening, of positioning and practicing. It is a journey worth celebrating in and of itself. For without our willingness to take the arduous, hope filled path, we will never arrive at the moment when change is born.
I have dusted off a red, wooden box version of an advent calendar that I have at home. There are 24 doors that reveal a spot inside for an object – a piece of candy, a small trinket, or the like. I am filling the spaces with words and quotes that inspire and fortify me for the journey. When I really think about the invitation the true spirit of Christmas offers each one of us, the season just may be too short.
In faith,
Alison