HOPE – The 1st Advent

On each of the four Sundays preceding Christmas an advent candle is lit. The four candles of Advent are named hope, love, joy and peace…

Do you observe Advent? I am a dedicated fan; my Christmas starts on the first day of December and is observed with glee until New Year’s Eve. The only exception to this rule is when the first Advent Sunday falls in November as it does this year. Today, in fact! 

I am not a member of any church or follower of formal religion but as a Christmas Tragic I have gleefully appropriated some of the most beautiful rituals of Christianity for our own family observances. The period of Advent is just the beginning! 

My introduction to Advent was in Germany with my dear exchange family in Bayern (Bavaria). On the first weekend after my arrival the family took me walking through the nearby countryside to gather branches and leaves to decorate it and I watched entranced, though uncomprehending, as my host mother created the gorgeous display. The Advent wreath sat prominently on the sideboard under the window in the dining room. Christmas in Germany smells like pine needles and candle wax and has an aura of warm yellow light. 

In 1988 Australia was celebrating 200 years of colonisation, the Bicentennial. In a stone church older than any building I had ever seen the priest beckoned me over. ‘How old is Australia?” he asked. ‘Two hundred,” I proudly answered (forgive my ignorance, at that stage I still had so much to learn. We all did). He pointed to an ancient tome sitting on the lectern in the back of the nave. It was the parish book of Births, Deaths and Marriages. It took me a moment to understand what I was looking at. The first entry in the book was from over 1000 years before. It’s a timeline my 15 year old white Aussie brain struggled to comprehend. 

The German language washed over me for though my conversational ability was coming along in leaps and bounds the vocabulary of religion had not been on my list to learn. Without understanding the words echoing around me I sat in the pew with my family and was free to gaze about the beautiful space, feel the rhythm of song and observance, and see the connection the community found in this place at this time. That sensation has never left me in all these years even without further participation in religious service.

Here in secular Australia we tend to associate Advent with pre-prepared calendars unrelated to the four Sundays and instead acting as a countdown of the 24 days up until Christmas Eve. They can be really very tacky. Usually made of cardboard with fold open doors hiding either a picture or, for the lucky child, a little piece of chocolate (never the good stuff). We didn’t ‘do’ Advent in my family growing up but by the time I was a mother they had become a ubiquitous part of the lead up to Christmas. An Advent calendar was an obvious element for me to introduce to my own children as a part of the Christmas fun. However, by the time our eldest child was approaching 2 and the first Christmas he was aware of, he had been diagnosed with diabetes. The whole idea of chocolate had to take a side step. 

I could picture my children leaving home with their ready-made collection of Christmas decorations. One from every year of their lives. The decorations tell a story of their own. The first are made of plastic beads strung on fishing line and hung from an old earring of mine. In the second year I had help from a bead shop in Bendigo and two have professionally made starters. The other is a thong of leather with a bell on the bottom threaded with big wooden beads, perfect for the fingers of a toddler. There are years where the strings are identical (no fighting over which colour is best!) and years where each child was assigned a theme (… but I HATE pink!). Beading fell out of fashion, specialist shops closed and finding the pretty things became hard, the sun catcher collected whatever was still in my basket and still became lovely. 

In the week or so before December 1 I sit down with my collection of beads and see what is there. Ideally I would think of a theme and buy accordingly but that never happens. I’ve decided  eclectic designs are the charm, let’s pretend it’s intentional and planned! I spread them out, see if they might come together to make something appealing, count the beads for there must be twenty-four. No more, definitely no less. I keep a mockup by my side and on November 30 Ian and I stand at the same fabric calendar sewn in 2004 and carefully dole out both beads and chocolate into the pockets. For many years the kids dreamed that Santa was the creator of this surprise and we didn’t disabuse them of it until they were well into their teens. I felt the need for a little recognition for my efforts by then!

OK, it’s not perfect. We would have saved a huge amount of money if I had just given into the chocolate calendars. Chocolate made its way into our calendars anyway so now the original intention to avoid sugar has long been lost and I’m spending far more on the individually wrapped Cadbury of choice. It’s become harder and harder to find pretty beads as well, and they’re also quite an expense. I’ve learned to spread out the cost and buy bits and pieces when I find them throughout the year. It makes the cost feel manageable and, upside, now sitting down to see what beads will make up the new Advent sun-catcher is a surprise to me, too. 

Another issue I face is that the earlier (cheaper) beading string is beginning to perish with exposure to sunlight and each year there are a few more to repair and restring. This year I think there are maybe eight sun catchers awaiting my attention before they can go back up on the window display.

The biggest downside? It’s quite heavy when it’s full. More than once we have come home to find that the cat has bumped it and knocked it off the carefully balanced frame. Beads and chocolates everywhere… and no memory of which bead went where!!! It hasn’t happened for a couple of years now. I’m over cautious with the pins holding it onto the board, it’s not coming off easily. Now I take a photo of the original mockup as back up. I’ve learned to go with that flow. None of these will be enough to make us stop this practice. It’s too special to us now.

The kidults won’t allow me to entertain any thoughts of stopping the practice. It’s ingrained in them as something equally important, if not more so, than what Santa Claus was on Christmas Eve when they were little. They remind me to buy the chocolates (I’ll just look away and pretend I didn’t see them, mum, wink, wink). They dig out the calendar and set it up ready. One of the three won’t be at Ardley for Advent for the first time this year. Don’t worry, Ms G. I’ve thought of a solution! The time is nigh when that original idea may need to become reality and the collection of sun-catchers gradually separated to go to their new homes with the young adults who made them. It thrills me to know that they will be able to continue the Christmas tradition in their own lives as they diverge from ours.

Stand by for a month of Christmas related celebration. I will be posting photos regularly of the growing 2022 sun catchers on social media. Feel free to have a look every now and then at how things are progressing. Do you observe Advent as a ceremony? How do you celebrate the Sundays? And… do you have an Advent calendar??? Share a pic!