The Advent Calendar- a lesson
I am not obsessively observant of my religious tradition, but some current trends are leading me to really question what on earth we are doing. I reference: the Advent Calendar. The Advent Calendar represents a kind of countdown between the official beginning of the Church year, the first Sunday in Advent to Christmas. The term Advent comes from the Latin, adventus: to come or to come forward. What is coming? — The presence of God among us. This is a period of about four weeks where in some Christian churches (Roman Catholic and Anglican/Episcopalian) vestments and altar dressings are purple. Purple here does not signify mourning so much as an atmosphere of quiet anticipation for the coming of the Christ child. –The very opposite of the frenetic “holiday season” of buying and consuming.
Growing up, we occasionally had an Advent calendar of little doors, behind which were images that caught the magic of the season, often holy images but snowflakes and sleighs as well. My husband crafted a complicated wooden calendar of little sliding doors, numbered from 1 to 25 which our children took turns opening every morning. It was a lovely “ceremony” and the children could see Christmas coming closer.
What bothers me today is the crass commercialization of the Advent calendar to a form that has absolutely no reference at all to its origins and meaning. The trend now is to have candy or toys (or in adult versions, tea, coffee, perfumes — you name it) behind each door. I even found one with wine. Wait… that sounds good. OK, I love tea, and wine, but… in an Advent Calendar? And the Star Wars Lego version, Play Doh, Marvel characters just… seem completely misguided. Oh, and just a wee bit commercial, eh?
Mind you, I get that secularization of Christmas, a return to the ancient patterns of wishing the winter to leave and celebrating the new year in January. And, full disclosure, I was obsessed with the gift giving aspect of Christmas as a child, like my peers. But there was still a connection between something that referenced a religious marking of time and the Advent Calendar.
Despite the waning of the influence of religion on our communities today, we as individuals and as a community still hunger for meaning. Maybe we are not finding it in religion and turn to giant blow up decorations erected weeks before the referenced holiday (Halloween in September, anyone? Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer and chorus in November?) Or we work ourselves into an economic maelstrom of activity shopping for X-mas. But at the end of the day what we all are really seeking is not toys, candy, perfume, or alcohol. We are trying to find what this all means. Why am I? Where are we headed? What matters in life? Try as advertisers do to resolve these questions for us with shopping, we humans know that is not really the answer. Maybe our organized religions are failing to provide a powerful alternative for us and perhaps we do not consider them as offering something more than rules, judgements, and scandal. Points taken.
But a simple Advent Calendar that tells a story can serve to remind us of the mystery of human existence, the longing for something transcendent in our lives, and the ever flowing passage of time. And that does not need fancy candy, plastic images of Darth Vader, or eye liner to distract us from this intensely human desire to live a life of significance.
Of course, for those out there who are now mad at me for dissing their favorite toys, it is fine to enjoy those figurines, candy, trinkets — and wine. But maybe we should not commandeer this pointer towards the deeper meaning that Advent offers us to consider.
