On "getting ready" for the holidays
Thoughts on the frenzy, the silence, and the light
Hello, friends. Welcome to my December newsletter, For the Noticers. I’m so glad you’re here. Read on for some thoughts about what I’m noticing lately…
Are you ready? That's the question I'm hearing a lot these days.
Ready for Christmas; ready for Hanukkah. Ready for the concert, the potluck, the party, for the kids to be off school for winter break. Ready for the twinkle and the feasting and the cozy. Ready for a break from the routine, here at the dark, cold turning of the year.
For some of us (i.e. me, my mom, most of my friends), getting ready means decorating and logistics: buying presents and wrapping them beautifully, cleaning the house and preparing to host people, maintaining the traditions that have come to mean so much.
For me, it also means mentally (and physically) preparing to travel hundreds of miles, so I can spend a few days with the Texas people I love the best. It means (briefly) trading the life I’ve built for the life I left. It means nephew Nerf wars and football on TV, cooking in Mom's kitchen and Christmas Eve candlelight service, airports and highways and a few long, looping solo runs in my parents’ wide-street neighborhood north of town.
For perhaps too few of us, or too few of us too often, it can also mean mental and spiritual preparation: asking whether our hearts are ready to receive the Christ child, and pondering what that might mean.
I’ve loved Advent almost since I found out what it was, when I stumbled upon a book of essays on an endcap in the National Cathedral gift shop in Washington, D.C., back in 2001. I was a high school senior, firmly entrenched in the evangelical milieu that put a lot of emphasis on Christmas and Easter, but barely mentioned Advent or Lent. But as I dove into the book with the blue cover, I fell head over heels for this season of quiet waiting and anticipation. A break from the bustle, yes, and also from the constant expectations: buying the perfect gift, reacting perfectly to the gifts I was given, choosing the perfect outfit for Christmas Eve service and the perfect words to say at holiday meals.
Advent offered - still offers - something different, something deeper: the chance to revisit the old prophecies that anticipated the birth of Jesus. The chance to admit, to say out loud in public, that not all is as it should be. To look at the cracks in the sparkling glass veneer of the season, and to finally own up to the truth: we are hurting. We are hungry, we are aching, and all of us live, in every season, with dashed hopes and disappointed expectations. This life, however full of joy, will never—can never—be all we want it to be. We try to find our way alone, and ultimately we always fail.
We need the hope that Advent provides, that light in the darkness. And, perhaps even more importantly, we need the discipline of hope. We need to be formed into people who hope.
Advent teaches us to be honest, and it also teaches us to look, to pay attention: to the God who is doing a new thing. To the possibility of light on the horizon, of redemption, of a story that gathers up all our broken pieces and makes them into something whole. Something different than we imagined, absolutely: the God of Israel is famous for working in surprising ways.
During Advent, we sing the songs of longing and aching: O Come O Come Emmanuel. Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus. Lo, He Comes with Clouds Descending. Watchman, Tell Us of the Night. They plead: Come. They point: Look, he is coming! And they ask for those who may have some insight to tell us the story again: the watchmen, the shepherds, the Magi, the virgin mother, even the animals gathered around the manger.
Advent teaches us to wait, and listen, and be still: all things that are not popular in our culture, where everyone is always waiting for the chance to get their word in. It teaches us to look beyond ourselves, beyond what we can make of our lives, for the Light that breaks in and touches each one of us, often in ways we didn’t expect. Advent teaches us to hope, but also to keep an open mind about what the fulfillment of that hope might look like. It teaches us, to quote a William Wordsworth poem, to “bring with [us] a heart / That watches and receives.”
It’s no wonder that Advent book I love so much is called Watch for the Light.
So, am I ready for Christmas? In some ways, yes.
I’m looking forward to hugs from my parents and chitchat standing in my sister’s kitchen, playing baseball and football with my nephews. I’m excited to hug my people in Abilene, and I can’t wait for Tex-Mex enchiladas and spicy salsa. My soul always thrills to the music at our Christmas Eve service, one of my favorite evenings of the year, when we sing all the verses of as many carols as we can squeeze in, and lift our lit candles during “Silent Night.”
But in other ways, I’m absolutely not ready yet.
I am still watching, still waiting, still turning my heart toward the hope I do not understand, yet so desperately need. I’m picking up that old, beloved Advent book again, turning back to the words that have helped me make sense of this season for more than twenty years. I am practicing the work of Advent, the work of being human: "hope in hard landscapes,” as my eloquent friend Stephanie Duncan Smith has it. (Her new book is an excellent companion for Advent.) I am trying to form the habits of hope and attention: watching and listening, expectant and open, so that I can—in the words of Loretta Ross-Gotta, “be a womb. Be a dwelling for God. Be surprised.”
New on the blog: thoughts on my current sacred text and making a (tired) joyful noise.
Reading: my beloved Advent book, of course. Stacks of mysteries and WWII fiction. Work emails, flight schedules, carol lyrics, and Jan Karon’s Mitford Christmas novel, Shepherds Abiding.
Listening: Christmas carols at Mem Church, on Spotify, at choir rehearsals twice a week. Ukulele and drums and laughter, at ZUMIX. Hammering and drilling (so much construction work in the neighborhood). And the occasional winter rainstorm.
Loving: This Vox piece on being generous with your invitations. Twinkle lights, anywhere I can get ‘em. Wildflower patches in cities. Tomato soup and peppermint Oreos from Flour Bakery. My iconic green coat. Local theatre. Budding paperwhites and my various leggy houseplants. And a catch-up call or two with old friends.