New Year's resolution
I think Advent is my favorite time of year.
It took me awhile to realize it. I'd spend the season irritated by commercial Christmas. Commercial Christmas started a few weeks ago. It'll peter out. By Actual Christmas, Commercial Christmas is almost over. Revellers are exhausted by the nonstop merry-making. By the 26th, trees are coming down.
A couple years ago I let go of my anger about what other people are doing. After all, I'm not bothered by Jews or Muslims or Atheists celebrating other holidays. If they give a glance to Christmas, it doesn't trouble me if their iteration doesn't look like mine. Why let Christians bug me? They are doing a different thing and that's ok.
Still, it took time to sort things in my head. What does this season mean? How do we celebrate it? It's all well and good to insist that Christmas wait until Christmas, but unless I want to be grinchy I still have to figure out how to interact, no celebrate, with the early Christmas revellers.
Advent is special. It's purple on the liturgical calendar. That means get ready. It's time to get ready for a big holiday. Sometimes we call it little Lent. It's not so focused on fasting, but fasting isn't inappropriate.
How can you see the light in the darkness if you fill the darkness with flashing bulbs and reflective glitter? How can you hear the quiet voice in the noisy canned carols?
Christmas is coming. Christ is coming. Our Lord and King is coming. Prepare. Get ready.
My resistance to this thing the world around me is doing was getting in the way. I didn't want to celebrate Christmas until Christmas. So, I'd wait until the least possible moment to put up decorations, making it a chaotic chore. I wouldn't bake Christmas cookies until Christmas, which meant the holiday would be spent in a messy kitchen or without cookies. No Christmas movies before Christmas. No. No. No. I spent this season of preparation in a perpetual state of no.
The quiet mystery of the season is shut down by anti-ism just as fast as it is by glittery secularism.
One year the obvious dawned on me: prepare means prepare. Put up the decorations. Slowly. Enjoy it. Bake the cookies through the whole season. Frozen dough bakes very well! Even watching the movies and singing the carols, in moderation, can increase anticipation. Don't crush joy. Frame it. Point it forward. Make time for quiet.
Advent is about getting ready. Prepare. Your home, if you like. But more importantly your heart. Advent is a time to meditate on what it means that Christ, our God, came to us as one of us.
And he's coming back. Prepare the way of the Lord! Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God!
The baby born in a barn with the animals is our King and he's coming back. Christmas is about the Nativity story, but Advent? Advent is about the waiting. Advent is the anticipation. Advent should resonate with each of us living in this broken world. This is not home. He's coming. Get ready.
Don't bury your coins! Get ready. He's coming.
The beginning of Advent is the beginning of the Church year. Resolution time! This year, I'm going to write a short meditation on the daily readings every day.
It took me awhile to realize it. I'd spend the season irritated by commercial Christmas. Commercial Christmas started a few weeks ago. It'll peter out. By Actual Christmas, Commercial Christmas is almost over. Revellers are exhausted by the nonstop merry-making. By the 26th, trees are coming down.
A couple years ago I let go of my anger about what other people are doing. After all, I'm not bothered by Jews or Muslims or Atheists celebrating other holidays. If they give a glance to Christmas, it doesn't trouble me if their iteration doesn't look like mine. Why let Christians bug me? They are doing a different thing and that's ok.
Still, it took time to sort things in my head. What does this season mean? How do we celebrate it? It's all well and good to insist that Christmas wait until Christmas, but unless I want to be grinchy I still have to figure out how to interact, no celebrate, with the early Christmas revellers.
Advent is special. It's purple on the liturgical calendar. That means get ready. It's time to get ready for a big holiday. Sometimes we call it little Lent. It's not so focused on fasting, but fasting isn't inappropriate.
How can you see the light in the darkness if you fill the darkness with flashing bulbs and reflective glitter? How can you hear the quiet voice in the noisy canned carols?
Christmas is coming. Christ is coming. Our Lord and King is coming. Prepare. Get ready.
My resistance to this thing the world around me is doing was getting in the way. I didn't want to celebrate Christmas until Christmas. So, I'd wait until the least possible moment to put up decorations, making it a chaotic chore. I wouldn't bake Christmas cookies until Christmas, which meant the holiday would be spent in a messy kitchen or without cookies. No Christmas movies before Christmas. No. No. No. I spent this season of preparation in a perpetual state of no.
The quiet mystery of the season is shut down by anti-ism just as fast as it is by glittery secularism.
One year the obvious dawned on me: prepare means prepare. Put up the decorations. Slowly. Enjoy it. Bake the cookies through the whole season. Frozen dough bakes very well! Even watching the movies and singing the carols, in moderation, can increase anticipation. Don't crush joy. Frame it. Point it forward. Make time for quiet.
Advent is about getting ready. Prepare. Your home, if you like. But more importantly your heart. Advent is a time to meditate on what it means that Christ, our God, came to us as one of us.
And he's coming back. Prepare the way of the Lord! Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God!
The baby born in a barn with the animals is our King and he's coming back. Christmas is about the Nativity story, but Advent? Advent is about the waiting. Advent is the anticipation. Advent should resonate with each of us living in this broken world. This is not home. He's coming. Get ready.
Don't bury your coins! Get ready. He's coming.
The beginning of Advent is the beginning of the Church year. Resolution time! This year, I'm going to write a short meditation on the daily readings every day.
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