The Reasons for the Season of Advent

    “Why aren’t you putting up the Christmas tree?”  I’ve heard that from my students I can’t tell you how many times every school day since Thanksgiving. “For the same reason we’re not having an Easter egg hunt”, I growl back, “it’s Advent, not Christmas!”  I have a nice Advent Wreath in my classroom with electric candles (state law prohibits real candles and, honestly, they could be the occasion of all sorts of mischief in a high school classroom).  We have special Advent prayers (printed on purple paper) taken from the Liturgy of the Hours for every day until Christmas, including the O Antiphons on the last seven class days before Christmas.  I have carefully explained to my young charges that this is a season of preparation and penitence, distinct from the Christmas Season.  To all of which I receive as a response: “Christmas and Advent are the same thing! Put up the tree!”

Classroom Advent Wreath last week, the 2nd week of Advent

I have to admit that the entire world outside my classroom (with the exception of Catholic churches, and those of other Christians who still honor the traditions of our forebears) is taking the side of my students on this one.  My second job, in fact, is at a retail store, where I work in the seasonal department.  Here, I find myself stocking and sorting Christmas lights and decorations before Halloween has even passed, and well before Thanksgiving I’m blasted with endless repetitions of the most execrable “Christmas” songs (most of which have virtually nothing to do with the Nativity of Christ) ever spawned in the brains of Tin Pan Alley songsters.  I’m convinced that if I ever succumb to a state of raving, maniacal insanity, it will be from having to hear “Santa Baby” one time too many.

So, why fight the tide?  Am I just being stubborn, rigid one might say, by sticking with the “old-fashioned” way of doing things? Not at all.  “Tradition”, G.K. Chesterton tells us, “is the democracy of the dead”.  It allows our ancestors the chance the present their perspective on whatever issue we may be facing.  If we’re smart, we’ll pay attention to them (which is not the same as mindlessly following them), because they normally spent generations dealing with the same, or similar issues.  Most human traditions represent the wisdom acquired through many years, often centuries, of trial and error. We who are Catholics ought to be particularly deferential toward those traditions which have also been established by the Church, because our Faith tells us that Christ created the Church to act on his behalf here on Earth.  I’m not suggesting that traditions such as liturgical seasons enjoy the same status as Dogma (“You’re risking hellfire if you put up that tree on December 4th!”), simply that it would be wiser to give serious consideration to why we have a separate season of Advent, for instance, than to simply go along with the secular conventional wisdom.

    Here, as always, the Church is happy to give us reasons for what she has established (see 1 Peter 3:15).  As it happens, there are three main purposes for setting aside this special time in the liturgical year. As the entry on Advent in the Catholic Encyclopedia explains:

During this time the faithful are admonished

• to prepare themselves worthily to celebrate the anniversary of the Lord's coming into the world as the incarnate God of love,
• thus to make their souls fitting abodes for the Redeemer coming in Holy Communion and through grace, and
• thereby to make themselves ready for His final coming as judge, at death and at the end of the world.
  
  

Moretto da Brescia's "Christ in the Wilderness"

    The first reason is the most obvious: we are preparing ourselves for the arrival (adventus in Latin) of the Messiah at Christmas. It’s impossible to overstate the importance of the Incarnation in human history; the only possibly greater event is the Resurrection at Easter, and one can argue that it makes more sense to look at both Christmas and Easter as different sides of the same event (see below). Furthermore, it is an enduring feature of humanity that we need to prepare, spiritually and psychologically, for important events.  Jesus spent forty days in the desert before undertaking his ministry, St. Paul several years before his; in a similar way, couples prepare themselves during a period of betrothal prior to marriage.  One used to be able to underscore this point by noting that the consummation ought to take place not after the engagement, but only after the wedding itself; unfortunately, in a society that believes in waiting for marriage no more than it believes in waiting for Christmas, this example doesn’t clarify for most people.  In any case, the special period set aside before the event impresses upon us the importance of the event itself.  The four weeks of preparation before Christmas tells us, on an experiential level, that the Nativity is a Very Big Deal indeed.

    The second reason (to prepare us to more fittingly receive Holy Communion) reminds us that Christ comes to us in different ways, which should not surprise us, as the events of Salvation History typically embody different layers of meaning, and hence the traditional four senses of scripture. In much the same way, we can find different dimensions to liturgical observances. Jesus, therefore, does not incarnate only as the child of Bethlehem.  In fact, we experience His adventus and incarnatio every time we receive His Body and Blood in Holy Communion.  The Nativity itself only makes sense in light of Christ’s offering up of Himself on the Cross, the baby resting on the wooden trestles of the manger as He will later hang on the wooden beams of the cross.  And so, during Advent we are called to reflect on Christ's coming bodily among us in the Holy Eucharist.

    Finally, there is yet a third adventus of the Messiah, a further way in which Christ comes into our world.  Like the Nativity, and unlike Holy Communion, it is a unique, one-time event: His coming in glory at the end of time. There’s still another meaning here as well, as each one of us receives a preview of sorts when He comes for us individually at death, the end of our own time here on Earth. Whether we are facing our own end, or the Ultimate End, we need to be ready to face our Judge.  As John the Baptist, who figures prominently in the Second sunday of Advent, warns us: “Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire” (Matthew 3:10). For this reason Advent, much like Lent, and unlike Christmas, is a penitential season.

From Michelangelo's "Last Judgment"

    And yet Advent is different from Lent, too, as Christmas is a less complicated celebration than the Triduum and Easter, the observances that follow Lent.  Let’s return for a moment to our wedding analogy.  Advent, as I said above, can be compared to the period of engagement before a wedding.  Even though we know that marriage will also entail trials and hardships, it is a fundamentally good and happy thing, and so we anticipate the coming wedding with joy. We start making arrangements in advance (planning a reception, choosing a dress, sending invitations, etc.).  As the wedding day itself draws closer, our preparations intensify with bridal showers, rehearsals, and the rest.  Likewise the celebration of Advent intensifies as we draw nearer to the joy of the Nativity: the 3rd Sunday of Advent is called Gaudete Sunday because the introit for the Mass comes from St. Paul’s letter to the Phillipians, Gaudete in Domino semper: iterum dico, gaudete (“Rejoice in the Lord always, I say again, rejoice”, Philipians 4:4); we show our joyful anticipation with a pink candle on our advent wreaths on this Sunday. Then also, from December 17th (the first day of the O Antiphons) the daily liturgy becomes more Christmas-centric.

    And so, in a spirit of preparation, I will at last relent and put up the tree in my classroom (an artificial tree, of course, in keeping with state law) in the last week before Christmas break. I will remind my students, however, that it’s not Christmas quite yet.  And, when they return the first week of January, when the decorations have already been disappearing out in the world, the tree will still be there to greet them . . . because then ‘twill be The Season To Be Jolly.