Advent: From Cynicism to a Love of Christmas

Embracing Hopeful Realism

Photo by Greyson Joralemon on Unsplash

Dear reader,

Advent begins tomorrow.¹ For those who aren’t familiar with the traditions of churches that follow the liturgical year Advent may be known only as a calendar with a chocolate to be eaten each day when a window of the calendar is opened. These days there are more elaborate calendars as well, like the one that offers a different whisky each day… I wouldn’t be complaining if that one made its way into our household.

Those are fun, but Advent is so much more than that. It’s the part of the calendar that helped me fall in love with Christmas.

When I was growing up as a kid, Christmas was a conflicting time. Sure, I liked it when I got presents and we ate special food (for us that was stuff like a boiled chicken and Christmas pudding with custard), but I was acutely aware that our Christmases were very different from what others seemed to experience, and it was certainly different from what was sold on TV as the ideal.