Dreaming of a Turquoise Advent

I have come to the conclusion that Advent should be longer.

‘Oh, no!’ you may groan.  ‘Not you, too!  Isn’t it bad enough that everyone starts celebrating Christmas at the beginning of November these days?’

I agree, it starts far too early.  A couple of weeks ago, when I invited friends round for an un-Christmas party, precisely on the grounds that 4^th November was nowhere near Christmas, my birthday, PDB11’s birthday, or anything except wanting to catch up with friends, neighbours and family – one of my friends couldn’t make it because she had to run a Christmas fair that day.

Sometimes, the months of November and December remind me of a radio skit I once heard in which a representative of the Narnia Businessbeings’ Guild negotiates with the White Witch to ask whether, instead of making it always winter and never Christmas, she could make it always the run-up to Christmas and never Christmas.  That way, he points out, they could at least boost Narnia’s economy by selling infinite-sized Advent calendars and putting up signs saying ‘Only infinite shopping days till Christmas,’ in every shop.  I hope C. S. Lewis, who hated the commercialisation of Christmas, would have enjoyed the sketch, had he still been around in the early 2000s to listen to it.

I can be as Scrooge-like as you like about all the rush to put up tinsel and Christmas trees in public places as soon as we’re past Remembrance Sunday.  Bear in mind, though, that a modern Scrooge wouldn’t hate Christmas at all.  On the contrary, he would delight in all the extra custom that comes to a payday loans company (we are never specifically told what Scrooge’s business does, but loan shark seems quite likely) when parents give in to the pressure from advertisers telling them that if they truly love their children, they will make Christmas extra special by buying everything on the wish-list even if they have to spend the next eleven months paying off their debts.

But this is precisely why I think we need time to step back from shopping, Christmas parties, and sending Christmas cards to everyone we are still vaguely in contact with.  We need to take time out to decide what it is that makes Christmas special, if buying a load of stuff isn’t the real meaning of Christmas.  And personally, I need to start well before December for this.

Of course, what is the meaning of Christmas depends, amongst other things, on whether you have religious faith.  As Randall Munroe explores here, arguably for secular culture, ‘discovering the true meaning of Christmas’ has become the meaning of Christmas in itself.

If you follow a religion other than Christianity, then you have your own winter festivals with their own significance.  So, instead of wishing you a generic American ‘Happy Holidays’, I wish you a joyous Hanukkah, Karthika Deepam,  Bodhi Day, Saturnalia, Yaldā Night, Soyal,  Pancha Ganapati, Dongzhi Festival, Mōdraniht, Birth of the Invincible Sun, Kwanzaa, Yule and Ōmisoka.  A university friend of PDB11’s regularly wishes us a happy Newtonmas – which is reasonable, given that Isaac Newton’s birthday, unlike Jesus’s, is actually known.

If you’re a Christian, then, unless you are one of the denominations that doesn’t celebrate it,  including Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists, and Quakers, then the chances are that you’re going to celebrate Christmas, because, even though nobody knows when Jesus’s actual birthday was, the fact that he was born is still worth celebrating.  If you’re non-religious but live in a western country, you’re probably going to celebrate it anyway, because it’s a spot of excitement in a cold wet season, a time to stop working, get together and party.

It’s more complicated for me than for most people, because, while I am a Christian, I am a highly ambivalent one.  It’s not that I don’t believe in Jesus, but that I’m not always sure that I trust him.  I tend to read the Bible with a paranoid eye which finds threats and condemnation where everyone else sees encouragement.  But hiding from my anxieties doesn’t resolve them.  With Christmas coming up, as with Easter, I need several weeks to think through what I feel about all this.

However, even if you’re not religious, I feel that the modern trend for starting to celebrate Christmas weeks in advance makes the actual day an anti-climax.  People start decorating their homes at the start of December, or, especially in America, the day after Thanksgiving (which this year is Friday 24^th November).  Advent only comes into the equation if it includes an Advent calendar dispensing 24 days’ worth of chocolates or gifts.  Christmas parties abound throughout the month. 

So by the time you get to the day itself – what’s new?  By Boxing Day, you feel guilty about how much too much you’ve eaten – but there’s still loads of leftover cake, right?  You tell yourself that you’re going to start a diet and exercise regime in January to make up for the season’s indulgence.

What if we did it the other way around?  What if, instead of going on a post-Christmas diet, we went on a pre-Christmas diet, so that mince pies, pfeffernusse or chocolate-covered shortbread are more of a treat when they come?

It isn’t easy, of course, when you’re surrounded by treats.  A few years ago, when I was working in a care home, most of the residents’ families brought in boxes of sweets, biscuits and mince pies in December to thank us for looking after their elderly relatives.  I could see that if I allowed myself to snack, I would be in danger of pigging out non-stop and neglecting the people I was supposed to look after.  So I told myself that I was giving up sweet treats until Christmas.  If my energy started to flag, I could have a piece of toast to keep my blood sugar levels up.  Somehow, swearing off sugary foods made it a lot more straightforward than if I had tried to limit myself to, say, just one chocolate biscuit per day.

As for Advent calendars – who says they have to contain chocolate?  When I was a child, we usually had a traditional calendar with a picture behind each window, to stimulate our imaginations and encourage us to look forward to Christmas, rather than offering a tangible treat each day.  Obviously, this saved my parents money; it was easier to share one calendar between three children if the reward behind each door was a picture (which we could all look at) rather than a small piece of chocolate (not really big enough for more than one person to eat), and the calendar could then be pressed flat between two large books and re-used the next year.  But it never felt like a cheapskate option.  On the contrary, it built up a sense of excitement and anticipation.

For the sake of simplicity, Advent calendars are 24 days long, running from 1^st to 24^th December.  In Protestant and Catholic churches, Advent is more variable in length, beginning on the fourth Sunday before Christmas, which can be as early as 27^th November or (as this year) as late as 3^rd December.

However, I discovered fairly recently that in the Orthodox Church, Advent is a forty day long fast, like Lent, lasting from 15^th November to 24^th December.

Obviously, this doesn’t mean forty days of eating nothing at all.  (I’ve tried intermittent days of not eating, and they usually leave me more mentally unhinged than holy.)  As this blog from a church in Pennsylvania explains, the Orthodox Church’s guidelines are:

 

·                     The 1st period is from November 15th through December 19th. (No meat, dairy, fish, wine and oil – however, fish, wine, and oil are permitted on Saturdays and Sundays, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays, oil and wine are permitted.)

·                     The 2nd period is from December 20th through December 24th. (No meat, dairy, wine, and oil.)

 

As PDB11 and I aren’t Orthodox, we decided on our own version.  Firstly, we decided it was a lot more manageable if Advent, like Lent in the western church, consisted of 40 days of self-denial over a 47-day period, rather than 40 days in one go, so we started on 8^th November in order to be able to have one day a week off (especially as we still have some cheese that needs using up).  Secondly, since many fish species are endangered but sunflowers, oilseed rape and olives are not, we decided to go fully vegetarian instead of being part-time pescatorians, but allow the use of vegetable oils and margarine.  We don’t generally drink wine anyway, and I can hold off cooking meals with wine sauces for a few weeks.

So, if what I’m doing at the moment isn’t exactly Orthodox Advent, and isn’t yet Protestant Advent, what should I call it?  Pre-Advent, maybe?

Many churches have a tradition of different colours representing different seasons of the Christian year.  In the Roman Catholic Church, violet (with the occasional day of pink) is the colour of Advent and Lent, white is the colour of Christmas and Easter, and green is the colour of Ordinary Time, the large part of the year that is neither a feast-day nor a fast.  Many Protestant churches use a similar colour-scheme, but with the option of dark blue for Advent, perhaps because it represents the night sky when Jesus was born.  I don’t know what the green of Ordinary Time represents, but I like to think of it as the green of the vibrant living world we have been given: green for grass and trees.

So maybe pre-Advent is turquoise, before I start shading into blue for 3^rd December, violet for the 10^th, and pink for the 17^th, Gaudete Sunday.  It’s not that there’s anything spiritual about going around wearing a turquoise blouse, I know.  If I was a truly spiritual person, I wouldn’t care what I wore.  But since a lot of my favourite tops are turquoise anyway, it’s nice to feel seasonal about wearing them.