Mourning Becomes Advent
As the Christmas season approaches, I find that I am filled with a low-grade dread. While Christmastime was once a wonderous time for me, the degradation of the world in my lifetime has brought me to a place where I pretty much despise this time of year. I have no new observations to offer; many people already roundly denounce the commercialization of the season in which we celebrate the birth of Christ. It has become a filthy, tawdry, grasping, shoving time, a time in which people stand outside shopping centers and ring a bell for a now-flaccid organization whose focus is hateful and ridiculous to many of the bell-ringers themselves. Families going into usurious debt to buy things for ungrateful, spoiled children who will discard even the most expensive toys shortly after receiving them. Elderly relatives being neglected during the time when loneliness and isolation tear at their souls most violently. Celebrities going out of their way to denounce and defile the name of Christ, and suburban moms and dads who ought to know better merely standing by. Families watching the same movies and tv programs that they’ve watched since forever, trying to recapture the feeling of a time gone forever, and the tired old programs get replaced by more recent ones…more vulgar ones. Ridiculous, screechy “carols” blasting over the speakers in any public place. Churches that look like ski lodges putting out colorful banners to announce various holiday services, specifically inviting the very ones who despise them and the people who have for years faithfully supported the churches. Homes with 10-foot tall inflatable Grinches and Homer Simpsons outside, with everyone inside sitting in front of the television but fixated on the small screens in their hands, even the children. And all in back of it, a fevered sense of disconnect, of waiting for the miracle of meaning to be dropped on them like manna, like snow, like acid dew. Like a fable to which they listen with thin and bemused tolerance.
I miss how Christmas was when I was a child. But I do not want to be a child again, not for anything in this world. Many of the things I believed as a child have served to cause me pain in my later years, seeing them now through eyes grown dim but wary.
This Sunday will mark the beginning of Advent, which is the one aspect of Christmas I do enjoy. It provides the one thing that has been bled from the rest of the season: anticipation. The idea of longing for the One Who will put things right, the one in Whom I ultimately hope, even when I rage against Him or murmur in bitter despair or tell Him in cold, cold whispers that it’s increasingly difficult for me to believe in Him.
I always look forward to lighting that first candle. The warmth in the cold darkness is more meaningful every year, in the time I have remaining. Seen a great light, I have.
“It is not as a child that I believe and confess Jesus Christ. My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt.” ― Fyodor Dostoyevsky
~ S.K. Orr
8 Comments
James
“I am not very sophisticated and intend to stay that way.”
I’m with you there LEWIS.
My father was born in a logging camp outside of Stevenson Washington.
About as sophisticated as he got was making sure he always had hankerchief in case mom needed one. I followed the practice and it has worked out fine. That’s how my wife and I met. I had a hankerchief and she needed one.
admin
Great anecdote about the handkerchief, James. When we were back in Texas earlier this month, I gave our grandsons a quiz. I asked them what a man should always have in his pocket. They made some great guesses, but the answer I impressed upon them was: a pocketknife and a handkerchief.
I always remember something that happened to me years ago. I was sitting in church at a funeral, and a woman next to me was sobbing uncontrollably. She had no Kleenix and the sleeve of her dress was soaked from tears and snot. I always carry two pressed handkerchiefs in my breast pocket when I wear a suit, and so I took one out and slid it over to her wordlessly. She reached over and took the handkerchief and nodded her thanks. The next time I saw her, she handed me my handkerchief back, spotlessly clean and starched and pressed into a perfect square. There was a note inside, which read, “Your gesture made my pain bearable. Thank you.”
James
Sometimes the smallest gesture can make another person’s worst day bearable. And most times it costs little or nothing to make that gesture.
admin
Amen and amen.
James
I’m not aware of a holiday that is any more than an empty shell of what it once was or intended to be. Bring up any holiday in the work place and the first thing most people think of, and comment on is “hey, a three day weekend”.
admin
So true, James. And so sad.
Lewis
I also long for the Christmas of my childhood. Mine was a country Christmas with a cedar tree, wonderful Southern food, and a fire in the fireplace. I was so lucky.
I am determined to believe no matter what! My ancestors believed that Christianity was the truth and they were much wiser than I am. They sort of took the guess work out of it for me. I also pray for him who will put things right. I am not very sophisticated and intend to stay that way.
Have a good Thanksgiving SK.
admin
Ah, Lewis, so good to hear from you.
Like you, I feel lucky and blessed to have experienced the childhood I did. We were quite poor, but we were happy and peaceful in that little rental house near the railroad tracks.
I like your determination to believe. I confess that I don’t have such determination, but I have hope, hope that I can persevere and endure to the end. You make a good point about our forefathers being wiser. This is one of the thing I remind myself of when the doubts come in like the tide. And mind you, I don’t doubt that God exists…I sometimes tell Him that I doubt Him in moments of low spirits and high anxiety. My doubts center around whether the promises are for me, and whether I can see this through to the end of my life. Just my struggle.
Like James said in his comment, the fact that you describe yourself as not sophisticated is a good thing. I’m not sophisticated, either, not by a long shot. I have a hick accent and people still poke fun at me about how I pronounce certain words. I think my problem is being too big for my britches. I’ve read too much and thought too deeply, and this hasn’t helped me one iota in my pursuit of God. I envy people with simple, even rustic faith. I wish I could return to a time when that was possible for me. All that remains for me, I think, is a great burning-away of the dross. And it is considerable.
Happy Thanksgiving to you, Lewis, my dear friend.