Let Advent Be Advent

Rachel Watkins contemplates an approach to Advent that focuses on meaning and memories, not Insta-worthy perfection.

Much to my dismay, a walk through any store lets you know Christmas is coming. I’m of the camp that Christmas decorations should wait until after Thanksgiving, but consumerism wants us to think about shopping all of the time and Christmas shopping should start sooner rather than later. A recent list of Advent calendars I saw online were countdowns of just 25 days, rather than corresponding to the length of the liturgical season. Only one hinted at Jesus with some angels—and that one included gin, socks, and nail polish! For the world at large, Advent is only a way to give yourself or others 25 extra gifts ahead of the big day with no inclusion of its decidedly Christian preparatory, prayerful, and penitential aspects.

But seeing a fully-decorated Christmas tree at my local grocery store did make me pause and wonder how we will celebrate Advent and the full Christmas season at my house. We are encouraged to consider doing the Jesse Tree, the O Antiphons, and an Advent wreath. There’s St. Lucy’s Day and Our Lady of Guadalupe, the sacrificial creche with real straw or yellow yarn, and on and on.

Our Church, surprisingly, has few additional expectations for Advent, with only the Feast of The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary as a Holy Day of Obligation and an expectation that you will have met your Confession obligation before the end of the year as essential.

When my children were younger, I would lean into everything. I have wonderful memories of hitting the mark with so many wonderful Catholic traditions and every saint’s feast day in December. I also have memories of failed attempts at these same traditions. One year, when I was recovering from another pregnancy, we failed to even get a Christmas tree! Every time we planned an adventure in the woods to cut one down it rained or snowed. What with work and school commitments, it just didn’t happen. Our solution? We took out construction paper, scissors, and tape and created a 10-foot paper tree on the wall of our dining room.

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Life sometimes gets in the way of your best-laid plans, but making plans is necessary. Celebrating the feasts, festivals, and traditions of our faith is what will make it alive to you and your children and Christmas has some of the best ones.

Now, with only teens in the house, I might be led to think that traditions such as an Advent wreath on the dinner table we don’t often even eat at would be ignored. However, last year I realized that seeing it every morning gave my family a sense of calm before heading out to face the world.

My now-adult children talk about “The Year Without Christmas Tree” with real affection. While I thought that year was a disaster, the paper ornaments we saved have become cherished treasures on our artificial tree (purchased a few years ago in a preemptive act against another lack of tree).

This leads me to remember the wise words of G.K. Chesterton. While in The Everlasting Man he profoundly tells us of the first Christmas, “The hands that had made the sun and stars were too small to reach the huge heads of the cattle,” he also once quipped, "If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.”

This is not an encouragement to a lack of real effort but an encouragement to try. The experts on Chesterton tell us he was speaking of things done out of love even when they won’t be perfect. This is what Christmas is all about: God loved us enough to give us His only begotten Son.

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Celebrating the feasts, festivals, and traditions of our faith is what will make it alive to you and your children. #CatholicMom

We can and should try to make the best Advent and Christmas we can for our families. Choose one or two of the great traditions—or choose a dozen. You know what you can handle and what you can’t. Maybe it will be the dedication to a finally completed Jesse Tree or several half-done paper Advent calendars hanging from the refrigerator.

Don’t let the world steal our Advent or Christmas as it has so many other of our traditions. Let the nail polish have a place in a stocking on the fireplace (maybe opened on St. Nicholas’ Day, Dec. 6?) and let Advent be Advent in whatever way it looks in your domestic Church.

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