The Journey Continues: the First Sunday of Advent
This year is different. We're still having flooring installed. My wife is painting the living room mantle and having work done to the brick fireplace, which is in close proximity to where I place the Christmas tree. I've spent Friday and Saturday in ankle, knee and back-straining work. And I feel that I've missed something: I've missed preparing the house for Christmas. And as I shared this feeling with my wife yesterday, she said something very profound:
"Honey, you have the Advent Spirt inside of you."
Even with all my years in church, and the countless Advent seasons singing in concerts, I never "got" Advent. I never really knew what it meant. It is the time of preparation for the coming Christ Child. It is the time for us, as Christians, to prepare our hearts for the babe in the manger. It really wasn't until I became involved in a Lutheran church that observed Advent that I understood the meaning of the season.
Each one of us has different ways to prepare ourselves for the Christ Child. I have found that for me, there are three things that I do that open my heart to the Christmas message.
Lighting of the Advent Candle - I never grew up with this tradition, but as our family started to get old enough my ex-wife and I started this tradition of lighting the Advent Candles each Sunday in Advent and Christmas Eve. Two years ago, as Brenda and I were dating, I introduced her to that tradition, and we continue it to this day.
Music - it's been a while since I've been in a Christmas or Advent concert, and that is by choice. I tend to be very busy at this time of year, and made a decision as my first marriage was ending to be there for the kids. I wanted to create a home that had family as the core. But that doesn't mean that the music of Christmas, particularly Advent, isn't played or listened to. My choices are eclectic, but I tend to listen to choral music that makes one ponder and think of Christmas - the profound paradox of a "little babe so few days old has come to rifle Satan's fold". Of course, I like to mix in some Nat King Cole or Bing Crosby, but the music I listen to reflects my personal Advent journey.
The written word - much has been written about Advent and Christmas, but one thing I do each Advent is read Dickens' A Christmas Carol. While there are plenty of movies and television adaptations, reading the original story allows me to understand it on a deeper level. I've never seen any of the film or television adaptations that capture Scrooge's nephew Fred's comment about Christmas:
"But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round -- apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that -- as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys." (underlined by me for emphasis)
That part is always omitted. Why? I don't know. But in reading A Christmas Carol I find that I share the sentiment of Fred's statement, and feel that the beauty of Advent is in understanding the importance of Christmas Day. In the reading of the story we better witness the slow chipping away at Scrooge's exterior, until he himself understands that it isn't about the tangible, but the intangible. The final sentences stating that Scrooge "...knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge." provides for us the final evidence of his redemption.
May we, this Advent and Christmas, discover the intangible, and prepare ourselves for the birth of the Christ Child.
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