Advent – a few somewhat unconnected thoughts

The Christian calendar turns over tomorrow. Each year, we begin our year with the first Sunday of Advent. I’ve wondered why this is, but never really researched it. So, what follows is not a theological discourse.

Ages ago, Christmas was set in December as a way to weaken the hold of “pagan” celebrations during the winter solstice. In recent years, I’ve wondered if this did any good, even at the time it was first initiated. Our oh-so-commercial Christmas season has almost entirely buried the holy. We talk about this as if it is a recent problem, but is it really? Or has embracing the holy perhaps always been a challenge?

The idea of starting our calendar with a celebration of the birth of the One through whom our religion was created makes sense to me. But how did these four weeks leading up to Christmas become the season of Advent?

I was talking to Kay about this the other day. She hypothesized that since Christ is the Light, and that since November is statistically the grayest, cloudiest month of the year, at least where we’ve lived, that Advent is a journey into the light. Probably not quite theologically accurate, but I like this. If I take that thread a little further, once the snow arrives, as it almost always does during Advent in northern Wisconsin, this journeying into the light is compounded, brightened even. (Maybe that’s part of the reason Kay doesn’t like a gray/green Christmas?)

Dictionary.com defines advent firstly as: “a coming into place, view, or being; arrival.” The word comes from the Latin, advenire, which The Latin Dictionary tells us means “To come upon, find.” Some of us like to sing, Veni, Veni Emmanuel (O Come, O Come Emmanuel) during this season.

I get that the advent of spring is a coming into being (from our human perspective, anyway.) Spring’s arrival is something I very much anticipate. Still, I don’t think of Advent (with a capital A, again) as something I anticipate so much.

Advent is a time of preparation. Songs and stories tell us to use these weeks as a time to prepare our minds and hearts for Christ’s coming. Or maybe rather than preparing ourselves, Advent is a season to open ourselves, intentionally, to the activity of God as Spirit, so that she can work in our lives*, preparing us. (In other words, it’s not us doing the preparation, but rather our being available so that we can be prepared.) Just a thought.

In what ways does Advent speak to you? Share your thoughts below.

Let’s help each other to prepare, or to open ourselves to being prepared, so that God can do great things in us and through us.

* When I heard John Bell speak this summer, he regularly used the feminine pronoun for the Spirit, each time telling his listeners that – in Hebrew – the word for Spirit, ruach, is feminine.