Appreciating Advent

This post originally appeared at Leaven for the Loaf.

I look forward to Advent every year. I actually look forward to rummaging through the candle drawer for the little purple votives (and I know there’s a pink in there somewhere). I like putting a purple-beribboned wreath on the front door, even when it’s a premade bow from the craft store tacked on to artificial greens. I like the app that puts daily Advent readings onto my tablet.  Lest you think I’m burnishing a halo, I hasten to assure you that I don’t have one. I’m just a very plain human being who knows a good thing when she sees one. And Advent is decidedly a Good Thing.

Charlie Brown never worked retail

I was a kid when A Charlie Brown Christmas debuted on TV way back when.  In the show, Charlie Brown bemoans what he knows is an over-commercialized season. I still love that show after all these years, even though I know that the kid obviously never had to work retail to support his family.

Have you ever worked in retail? You know, one of those businesses that depend on the last two months of the year for a third of the year’s revenue? The kind that makes you listen to Christmas holiday music on every shift beginning right after ThanksgivingVeteran’s Day Halloween? The kind where you work until close of business on December 24, whereupon you collapse and want to sleep for a week?

I have. It was hardly involuntary servitude. I had great bosses and coworkers and customers. It was a new small business, featuring chocolate and coffee, and we all had the exhilarating and well-founded feeling that each thing we did could mean the difference between staying open and going under. December had to be huge for us. We all pitched in and pitched hard. Thank you, December shoppers. You made sure my bosses could pay me. That job was a blessing…and it absolutely drained me. When I locked the shop door at 3 p.m. on my first Christmas Eve there, I was ready to keel over. I hadn’t had time to shop for my husband and kids. I hadn’t done any advance prep for the extended-family dinner I was supposed to have ready by 6. I wanted to go to Midnight Mass but had no idea how I’d be awake for it. (In fact, I can’t remember if I got there.)

I wasn’t ready for Christmas. I had dropped Advent.

Don’t blame the cash register

Here’s where I could blame Commercialized Holidays or Secular Christmas for my post-retail letdown. I would love to point a finger at outside forces whenever December gets overwhelming. I could blame the customers!  …except that would all be nonsense.

No one can “do” Advent for me. No one owes me four weeks off from real life so I can be bright-eyed & chirpy at Midnight Mass. I’ve learned to treasure Advent not because it makes me feel better or helps me enjoy Christmas more (which it does), but because if I am to celebrate the Incarnation, I need to do so with fresh reverence and joy each time. I can’t pick that up from anyone else, although being amid fellow believers in Christ’s divinity is a big help. They can influence me, but they can’t choose for me. I choose to observe Advent.

Frankly, I have to make the choice, or else it ain’t happening. There’s work (by the way, have you hugged your local retail worker today?). There’s parenthood. I spent many years with my December calendar full of school concerts and projects. There are all the cultural gems that would be lovely the week after Christmas, except that everything seems to be jammed into the first three weeks of the month. Seriously – wouldn’t it be nice to see the local dance school put on excerpts from the Nutcracker after December 25? Why does the community Messiah singalong have to be over before December 10?

We live in a country and a culture where Christmas ends on December 25 instead of beginning there. I can whine or I can do something about it.

Cultural subversion

C’mon. Undermine American Christmas culture. You know you want to. Wouldn’t be the first time you stood against the tide – not if you spend any time defending the value of human life from its beginning to its end. Compared to that, celebrating Advent is a piece of cake.

I just got off the phone with a friend who apologized for being unable to join me at a political event tomorrow. Her reason? She’s leading an Advent prayer group at her church. There’s a countercultural woman in action. God bless her. The political event will be poorer for her choice, while the community as a whole will be richer. That’s a net gain.

I will do all I can to affirm this unique and irreplaceable season. I’m preparing to celebrate the Nativity of Christ, for crying out loud. The Incarnation! Taking the time to let that sink in is perhaps Advent’s greatest imperative. And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. If that fact doesn’t rock my world every time I contemplate it, I’m a spiritual orphan.

The blogosphere is full of Advent material, most of it provided by people far wiser than I. I’ll simply list a few things I do during the season. Whether they make you think, laugh, or just roll your eyes, I offer them for what they’re worth.

  • I look for good reading and good praying, which are inseparable as far as I’m concerned. Absolutely bare-bones minimum, no matter how full the day, is five minutes morning and evening. I’ve already mentioned the Magnificat app, which is new each year and which keeps daily Advent readings at my fingertips. I also recommend The Essential Advent and Christmas Handbook from the Redemptorists. It includes Scripture readings, prayers, and practical activities.
  • I try to find a decent Advent calendar. I refuse to get one that’s Santa-themed, unless Santa is depicted kneeling in prayer in the snow. I think St. Nicholas might be with me on that one.
  • When my parish offers an Advent program, I try to attend. The quality of the speakers can be uneven, but no matter. Best case, I learn something and I benefit from being amid my sisters and brothers in faith. Worst case, I devote an evening to a public observance of Advent, thus poking in the eye all the forces that made Charlie Brown sad.
  • We put Advent candles on my family’s dining table. Martha Stewart was unavailable to consult on the design of the display. The plate is a wedding gift from 33 years ago that doesn’t get much use. The candles are from the grocery store, and the holders are from the dollar store. It’s the Advent-candle equivalent of Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree. All the more reason to love it.

So hello, Advent. Make yourself at home. I’ve missed you.

“We need more rocks in the river”: a non-Catholic welcomes Pope Benedict

Six Thanksgivings ago, I bookmarked a post by Jonah Goldberg at National Review Online. “This pope plays it right” is a meditation by a secular writer on his father, on Pope Benedict, Catholicism, and broadly-defined conservatism. Whether I agree or not with his interpretation of Church teaching, I respect his willingness to consider it. In doing so, he struck notes that resonate with me to this day.

“In the spring of 2005, Pope John Paul II died. My father, who passed away that summer, watched the funeral and the inauguration of the current pope, Benedict XVI, from his hospital bed. My dad, a Jew, loved the spectacle of it all. (The Vatican, he said, was the last institution that ‘really knows how to dress.’)

“From what he could tell, he liked this new pope too. ‘We need more rocks in the river,’ my dad explained. What he meant was that change comes so fast, in such a relentless torrent, that we need people and things that stand up to it and offer respite from the current.

…I appreciate the role the Church plays in savoring the right notes.

I offer you the link to the full post as a little Thanksgiving token. May you read it in peace.

On St. Clement

The parish where I grew up was St. Clement’s. All I knew about the saint was that his name was mentioned in the Roman Canon, AKA the first Eucharistic Prayer – you know, the long one. Thus does a child process church history.

I’ve since learned more about the people listed by name in that Prayer, and I understand what I lost during the years when I tuned out any Eucharistic Prayer that took more than three minutes to recite. Parents, be patient; I’m living proof that inattentive kids come around eventually.

Today is St. Clement’s feast day. I now know that he was one of the early popes, back in the days when that meant certain persecution. He knew Peter and Paul, and he learned from them what Christian ministry looked like. He saw their sufferings, and he accepted the post of Bishop of Rome anyway. It’s right that we remember and honor him.

My trusty Laudate app provides me today with a portion of a letter from Clement to the Corinthians, the same fractious people that St. Paul had to admonish.

It was through jealousy and envy that the greatest and most upright pillars of the Church were persecuted and struggled unto death. Let us set before our eyes the good apostles. First of all, Peter, who because of unreasonable jealousy, suffered not merely once or twice but many times, and, having thus given his witness,went to the place of glory that he deserved. It was through jealousy and conflict that Paul showed the way to the prize for perseverance….We are writing this, beloved, not only for your admonition but also as a reminder to ourselves; for we are placed in the same arena, and the same contest lies before us. Hence we ought to put aside vain and useless concerns and should consider what is good, pleasing and acceptable in the sight of him who made us. Let us fix our gaze on the blood of Christ, realizing how precious it is to his Father, since it was shed for our salvation and brought the grace of repentance to all the world.