11.27.07
Advent
If someone were to ask me what my favorite holiday of the year is, I would have to say “Christmas.” But I don’t really mean Christmas Day, per se - I mean the whole Advent season. (If I HAD to pick just one day, I’d probably end up saying Easter). In my family growing up, we usually began to celebrate Christmas the day after Thanksgiving, and that is what Mike and I have chosen to do the last couple of years.
“Advent” means “coming” - it is a reference both to Christ’s coming to us, and to our nearing the Christmas holiday. As a season, it is a time of preparation, waiting, and excitement as we look forward to His return by remembering His birth. I’ve always loved this time of year - with its rich tapestry of traditions, symbols, wonder, worship, awe, and joy. I often call this tapestry “the Christmas magic,” and it seems inescapable in December, even for those who don’t understand what it really is about or try to smother that reality. But for those of us who know the Truth, how can we not experience it? Immanuel - God with us - demands a response from us.
This Christmas season is different than any other I remember, as our little family awaits an “advent” of our own - Ioan’s birth any day now. As I packed my bag for the hospital last night (yes, I know - that should’ve been done weeks ago), I found myself wondering what Mary might have packed for her journey to Bethlehem, knowing that her pregnancy was nearing its end.
My list of things to pack included baby clothes and a blanket to bring our son home from the hospital. Was the swaddling blanket Jesus was wrapped in that night a gift from family or friends? Or something Mary had prepared herself, months ahead of time? Or was it whatever they could manage to find on short notice after an early and unexpected birth?
I also packed a camera, and thought about the verse in Luke, after the shepherds leave, that says “Mary treasured all these things, and pondered them in her heart.” I can imagine, if they had cameras back then, that line might have said she treasured these things, and spent hours looking back through his baby book.
As I packed shampoo, a hair brush, make-up, and toothpaste, I thought about how in the picture books and nativity scenes, Mary always looks so beautiful and serene - and I realized with shock that she probably WASN’T, and wondered if the exhausted and disheveled young mother might not have resented the intrusion of the shepherds - just a little.
This morning I printed off a copy of my mom’s flight itinerary for her trip, and added it to the bag, just in case. I wondered if Mary wished she could’ve been closer to home, with her mom or some other experienced and trusted woman to help her through her first labor and delivery. Had anyone told her what to expect, what to do? Or was it all instinctive? Was she scared? I wondered if Joseph was worried, uncertain, or over-protective. Did he stay with her the whole time, or go look for help? Was it an “easy” birth or a complicated one?
In the long run, of course, none of these questions really matters compared to the amazing reality that God became a man - if they did matter, they would have been mentioned. But this Christmas, I have been reminded, perhaps more than any other Christmas in my life, that this is a story about real people - not the smiling bulletin board cut-outs, or the sober and solemn nativity pieces, but real every-day people, in our real and crazy world. God came to be with US - not in a fairy-tale or an alternate universe, but into the fabric of ordinary, everyday life in an ordinary, everyday family.
Praise his name!