Celebrating Advent means impersonating the Grinch to an extent. In our culture, to put an air of penitence and austerity amidst the larger “19 Shopping Days Left Until Christmas” mindset is to mark oneself out as a radical. Even a fear-filled and joyless radical. Well, call me a fear-filled and joyless radical, but my family “celebrates” Advent before Christmas. (Hairshirt optional.) Please, do not begin caroling until the big day. Keep the Christmas cookies in the freezer until Jesus arrives.
It started as a reaction to the gigantic amount of work that Christmas entails for young mothers. Like many first-time mothers, I took my two year-old daughter to see Santa the first week he hit the mall. She cried. We baked Christmas cookies together. (Guess who got to clean up?) We shopped and shopped, and I learned about temper tantrums. We made ornaments, and she ripped them up. We made a gingerbread house, and she ate the candy and caved the roof in. The problem was not my daughter — she was a perfectly normal toddler. The problem was me! I wanted my happy Christmas memories, and I wanted them now!
We also tried to make candy. Unfortunately, it was not a success, because candymaking requires patience and a candy thermometer. I had neither. If you do not have a candy thermometer, you are forced to use-test the candy in cold water using the following table from the Betty Crocker cookbook:
Thread Syrup spins 2 ” thread from spoon
Soft Ball Stage Can be shaped into a ball, but flattens when removed from water
Firm Ball Stage Can be shaped into ball that does not flatten out of water
Hard Ball Stage Forms hard, but pliable ball
Soft Crack Stage Syrup separates into threads that are not hard or brittle
Hard Crack Stage Syrup separates into brittle threads
The stage they never add to this list is “Burned and scorched.” I can tell you just how it smells as it is being thrown in the garbage, and it seems to occur immediately after Hard Ball stage. Thus, I have made it my unofficial Advent resolution never to go beyond Hard Ball stage, in candy-making or anything else. If the duties of the day do not include time for baking and shopping, so be it. My heart is the hard but pliable ball, and I dare not let it become separated, over Christmas or anything else.
Advent has become my plea for simplicity. We attend only a few parties before Christmas, and I refuse to let myself stress over Christmas cards. There are 12 days of Christmas after the big day for such frivolities. During Advent, I try to spend more time catching up with those people who deserve more of my time and attention than they usually receive during the year. I also spend a little extra time praying for our priests, who quietly bear the brunt of their parishioners’ emotional pain during this very family-oriented season.
Honoring Advent does not mean we skip the Christmas tree. We did try waiting until the week of Christmas to purchase and decorate the tree once. I do not recommend this — the trees by then are truly dead, and look like it. (Your vacuum will never be the same.) Since that fateful discovery, we purchase the tree right off the truck the first week of the sale, and decorate for every week of the penitential season at hand.
This is as it should be. Advent is a season to recall how very much we need a Savior. And we cannot appeal to our need for salvation without remembering the pristine purity of the world as God created it … prior to the Fall of Adam and Eve. The first week of Advent hearkens back to the Garden, and the joy and beauty that we were created to possess for all eternity. The freshly cut spruce set up in a prominent spot in our home remains just that perfect, in all its pine-scented glory.
My illusions are now long gone. I know that my house will never resemble Martha Stewart’s, and that the children will make every Christmas special in their own simple ways. As I sit quietly in meditation beside the unadorned Christmas tree this week, I will thank God for His goodness in all creation, and hope for a brighter future for all of His children. I might even try making candy again this year. Yes! This will be the year I push to the soft crack stage, but only with supervision. I know my limits.
