Wendy Froats-St Matthews Ingleside
When I was little, Mum made an Advent calendar—a quilted thing of brightly printed cotton with a picture of big – eyed animals cosily doing something in a well – stocked country kitchen. I think they might have been threading cranberries on a string. Or maybe it was popcorn. Something festive. And it was very much 80s kitsch, I suppose, but at the time I thought it was beautiful.
Most importantly, all around the picture there were numbers—one through 24. Each number had a ring stitched beside it, and Mum carefully tied two Hershey’s Kisses to each ring. Two because there were four of us, and waiting for three days while the others ate chocolate, having yours only on the fourth day, was no way to get through Advent.
I’m not one for quilting, I’m afraid, so last year I bought an Advent candle for my family instead. It sat on our table, and every evening we lit it over supper. It was a tapered candle, wider at the bottom than at the top. As Christmas got closer, it took longer each evening for the numbers to melt away. That meant that we sat longer, too. Sometimes quietly, sometimes at top joyous volume, we watched the candle’s light together. Some nights, when we had to rush out for something at school or a carol service at church or to Christmas parties with friends, we missed lighting it altogether. The next night, the kids would be concerned that we’d missed out, and they would make sure we sat together even longer, catching up with our candle.
The difficulty with all Advent calendars, whatever their shape, is that they get used up. Mum’s was a bit more lasting—you could always sew on more kisses next year—but come Christmas Day, Advent calendars are empty and obsolete. Maybe one day I’ll craft one that would be as beautiful as Mum’s, as sweet as chocolate, as place – creating as the candle but that somehow builds up rather than counting down.
We often think of Advent as something to get through. We make it synonymous with December, a succession of stressful days and weeks before we can put our feet up and enjoy the eggnog. We make it a stressful journey to be rushed through.
But Advent might be a place in its own right, not just a road forward. A place of preparation, perhaps, but a place nonetheless.
Like a table. Not just a means to an end. Not just a place for consumption, but a place to be and to be nourished.
Advent might be the table where we sit as the incarnation draws near.
Some of what I’m reading right now is helping me understand this idea. Gertrude Stein grappled earnestly with the meanings of self, and she drew a line between identity and entity. Identity she saw as the bit of us that we compose for others to see. Entity is the part which does the looking.
Christ, the Advent child, is the identity of God. He is the face of God that people could see. But Christ is also the entity of God—God near enough to see us, face to face.
When I was a new mum, this was a surprise of birth for me. When my tiny girl was born, she was astonishingly herself. Already herself. I could only look and look, and she looked back. A small, hungry scrap of being already looking back at me.
At Christmas, God was born into entity and into relationship. In Advent, we wait for that relationship to begin. Again we wait to see and to be seen by the Word made flesh. We wait with each other, looking into each other’s faces by candlelight, waiting for the Christ child’s arrival. We wait together.
Happy Advent.
