Let me be clear about one thing: I love Christmas. I mean I REALLY love Christmas.
Which is precisely why I hate what the world around us does with Christmas. I hate how everything explodes Christmas the day after Halloween and shuts down just as suddenly on the stroke of midnight on December 26th. Consequently, when I see Christmas decorations, hear Christmas music, or drink from red Starbucks cups in early November, I tend to feel rather like the Grinch or Ebenezer Scrooge, grouchily complaining about the excess of Christmas-ness which surrounds them. But unlike Scrooge or the Grinch, this is not because I dislike Christmas itself but because I hate how the meaning of Christmas has been turned so dramatically upside down, essentially because of the love of money (which, as the Word of God reminds us, is the root of all evil).
In contrast, there is great wisdom, as always, to what the Church teaches us about celebrating the season. The Christmas season does not consist of the weeks leading up to Christmas but rather the weeks following Christmas. In other words, the Christmas season only begins on December 25th, not ends. The weeks leading up to Christmas, what we call the season of Advent, are meant to be a time not of total celebration yet but rather a time of preparation, of looking forward to the good things to come. And the more we prepare for an event, the more we get out of it. So I believe that by reclaiming a sense of Advent as a time of preparation for Christmas, we will be more disposed to truly make the most out of the Christmas season.
So, by way of revitalizing my sorely-neglected blog, I would like to devout several successive posts to my thoughts (or vents, as the case may often be) on making the most of the Advent season, so that this Christmas may not pass us by in whirlwind of activity, as it so often does; but by God's grace may this Christmas truly be for us all the best Christmas ever.
Pax Vobiscum
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