Book of Days

Thanksgiving has passed and for those of us who take things slowly, tonight marks the First Sunday of Advent, a time of preparation, and we begin our procession toward the joy of Christmas. Without Advent, Christmas very easily becomes that thing that people do not like: “A big commercial racket,” as Lucy Van Pelt says each year in A Charlie Brown Christmas. It very easily becomes too sweet, a bit sickening, and people tire of it quickly. This is the problem with Christmas.

Christmas is about joy, but it is Advent that sets the stage for that joy. It eases us into the celebration. And it does so brilliantly, by acknowledging that these are dark times, times that require a boost like Christmas, and the darkness is as much literal as it is figurative, for the nights now are growing longer and longer in the Northern Hemisphere, and they will continue to do so all the way to the Winter Solstice, which this year is on the 21st of December. Advent takes that darkness, becomes a part of it and casts light upon it. Tonight, this First Sunday of Advent, we will light one purple candle in our circle of four candles. On the Second Sunday of Advent, December 7, we light that same candle and another purple candle. The following week, the Third Sunday of Advent, we light two purples and one rose candle. And on the Fourth Sunday of Advent, the night of the solstice, just before Christmas, all four candles in the ring are illuminated. As the darkness of night increases, so does the light issuing from our ring of candles.

When I was a boy, we’d light the Advent ring, often late at night, with the whole family gathered, but quickly folks would go their own ways. There is always much to do, after all. But Grandma and I would sit there longer each Sunday, in the darkness with the candles glowing, maybe with a Christmas album playing on the record player until it reached the end of the record, be it Side A or Side B, and at the end, the arm of the phonograph would lift the needle and the music would stop and that’s usually when we’d get up and blow out the candles. A quiet ritual, but how special. And I still remember that clearly, clear as that candle glow.

Tonight as I write this for you, the music is coming from the CD player (even that is outdated now, isn’t it?) and it is a recording called Hymnody of Earth by Malcolm Dalglish. Choir, hammered dulcimer, frame drum, songs inspired by the poetry of Wendell Berry. Nothing particularly “adventy” about these songs, although there is one song for the solstice and its longest night. There is a song, though, called “Thrush Song.” It ends with, “I go amazed / Into the maze of a design / That mind can follow but not know, / Apparent, plain, and yet unknown, / The outline lost in earth and sky.”

Whether your approach to Advent is a religious one, awaiting the birth of the child, or a secular one, awaiting the return of light, I think the words of Mr. Berry are fitting. This is the beauty, the value, of Advent. We go amazed into the maze, we go together, and out of the darkness comes something really special.

Image: A maze of lights in the darkness, last Christmas, out the front door. Can you discern the kitty ears? Haden was looking out the window when I took that photo.