Preparations & Advent

We are about a week away from the beginning of Advent & the more official Countdown to Christmas. Advent is actually a time of preparation, despite the shops having begun their advent almost as soon as the dreadful Halloween is done & dusted!

I am one of those strange & unusual people who seem to invoke fury, pity & envy in equal measures, as I begin my Christmas shopping very early. It is partly the element of my personality that cannot cope with crowds & likes everything to be organised, partly too that my daughter's birthday & mine fall in December, before Christmas & I have always resented them being gobbled up by any stress of Christmas preparations so make certain they are not, & finally because I love the season of Advent & of preparation & anticipation so much, I want to enjoy it & can't do so if I'm battling with everyone else!

I was intrigued by a conversation I had with a friend who, when talking of Christmas said - "I actually prefer the lead up to Christmas rather than the day itself." I know what she means, yet am so saddened by it. Our society's obsession with 'stuff' & the acquiring of it; the perfectionism portrayed in advertising of the 'perfect Christmas' & all that you 'must have' in order to achieve it; the perennial hoards who flock to the shopping centres to create that perfection, all go together to form a sense of collective mission. People talk in shops at this time of year. The sense of community is born again within this time of Advent, even if it is a kind of frenetic version of Advent & unlike the kind of preparation I think was envisaged when people first coined the word. (Ask anyone in the street what Advent means to them & most would say Chocolate Calendar!)

I feel that this all goes to sum up our society in some small way! We are so caught up in the consumerism & perfectionism portrayed on the billboards, radio & TV of what Christmas is all about & what you need to make the perfect Christmas & we get so caught up in it that when we come to the day itself, it never lives up to the picture we have created in our minds. If only we could enjoy the journey there for its own pleasure - the joint venture with others, the sense of community so lost to us for most of the rest of the year, the joy of selecting & giving of presents then maybe, just maybe we would feel the sense of satisfaction & of achievement when we came to Christmas Day that I'm sure God felt when, finally after all the preparations, Jesus, the Saviour was born in a cave at the back of a small inn in Bethlehem. That birth totally went against the perfectionist view of how the Savour of the world should come & there isn't an ad agency in all of time that would have used that reality as an illustration for their perfect Christmas, yet God's way of doing things meant there wasn't an ideal to live up to & fail, or be disappointed by or feel that sense of hopelessness from, no, God's way was to show that the preparations led to the very, very best gift of all, who managed to cut through all the hype & perfectionism to show what is really important & in that, we can rejoice & enjoy Christmas.

'Glory to God in the highest & peace to men (& women) on earth'

Merry Christmas!