For several years I had a five-church parish, roughly the size of Rhode Island, in northern Alberta, Canada. This time of the year sunrise came about eleven in the morning; dusk a little after two in the afternoon. On Sundays, by the time I finished the last service of the day at eight that night, I still had some ninety miles to drive home. It was not so bad in the summer when the days were long, but in winter, it was frightening. The temperatures hovered around thirty degrees belong zero, the winds could be fierce enough to send the wind chill down much further, and I had to drive on narrow roads across open prairie. If something went wrong, the Mounties would find what was left of me in the spring.
I drove from one farm light to the next, breathing a sigh of relief when I finally saw the flashing red light on top of the radar station at Canadian Forces Base Cold Lake, just a few miles further up the road. I wasn’t exactly home, but I was close enough to breathe a sigh of relief and feel safe again.
For Christians around the world, December is the Season of Advent. It is only four weeks long, ending with all the hope, anticipation, and joys of Christmas.
Advent was once important, but that began to diminish two hundred years ago when Thomas Nast, Prince Albert, Clement Moore, and Charles Dickens changed reinvented Christmas. Today, rather than Advent being a shortened version of Lent, we celebrate Christmas earlier, and all but ignore this short season. Gone is the fasting and penitence of previous centuries, replaced by joyous activities. A friend once said the only thing left of it is the Advent Calendar, and that is because there is the pay-off of a tiny chocolate behind each window that counts down the days. “And most of the calendars are not religious, either” she observed.
Christmas is our light, but still a long way off, especially for children. For them, it is an important adult lesson of reality. We must wait and watch in the darkness. As my friend asked, “But what good is the light if everything around us is already bright and shiny? We need the frosty gloom of Advent to appreciate it.”
We sometimes talk about how wonderful Christmas was in the past, but we have always been surrounded by the dark gloom of life. Eighty years ago, it was gloom and fear because of the Second World War. Seventy years ago, it was Korea, the fright of the Red Menace in our country and the opposite threat of too much Senator Joseph McCarthy. Sixty years ago, we had experienced the assassination of President Kennedy only a few weeks earlier. For many, it did not feel right to be in a celebratory mood, even when we justified it by saying we’re doing it for the kids.
Or, do you remember fifty years ago, 1973, when there was a gasoline and fuel shortage in this country? The President and most state governors ordered unnecessary lights, including holiday lights, turned off, dissuaded people from traveling for Christmas and New Years, and we were horrified at gas costing nearly a dollar a gallon.
On and on the list goes, but there was always something going wrong, and the gloom creeps closer and bites harder.
More recently, three years ago much of life as put on pause during the Pandemic, and Christmas ‘didn’t seem like Christmas’ when we could not get together in homes or churches. Or, last year, when the Great Shut Down was over and we were looking forward to being together on Christmas Eve, whether in our churches or homes, and we were sucker-punched by an industrial strength blizzard.
Every time it happened to us, we said, “next year.” Next year things will be better, and that dim little light of Christmas Future flickers on in the distance, giving us reason to hope. Next year simply must be different and better, we promise ourselves and others. In many ways life always seems to be too much like driving through a cold winter night across the prairie, looking for the next light and the next light after that.
Now it is December once again, and we wait and wonder. Will there be a full-bored Christmas this year? Will the light fizzle out just before we get there? Again? And when Christmas finally arrives, will it be all that we had hoped for?
December is always a time of hope. The ancients watched and lived in fear as each day there was less daylight than the previous day. They were terrified the gods were angry, and one day there would be no light, the earth would freeze, and people would freeze with it. For the ancient Romans it led to the two-week solemn time of Saturnalias, beginning on the winter solstice. Even when they realized that all their sacrifices had no effect on the lengthening of days later in December and throughout the next months, they continued their observance, adding riotous partying. It got so out of hand that the Roman Senate outlawed the celebration, but to little effect.
Meanwhile, in England and Scotland, the Druids led their followers through the rituals of bringing mistletoe into their homes, and weaving pine boughs into wreaths. The Saxons, still living in what is now northern Germany, cut pine trees to bring into their home, and wove garlands of ivy to drape over the spinning wheel, symbolizing that work was over for the remaining days of the year.
With the growing minutes and hours of darkness at this time of the year, my friend observed, “Normal time falls into step with eternity.”
If only for a short time, we find the moments of elusive peace, joy, and comfort, just as on Christmas Eve in 1914, when enemy troops sang carols back and forth to each across No Man’s Land, and sang other carols together. It was ‘peace on earth and good will toward mankind,’ but it did not last long.
We Anglicans often recite a short prayer at this time of year. It helps put things in perspective and gives us a bit of peace of heart in the hurriedness of preparing for Christmas. “Give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armor of light, now in this time of mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility.”