Giving In, Not Giving Up

We are Advent people at our house. That means that we believe the season leading up to Christmas is for preparation. Advent is for watchful waiting. This means we don't decorate right at Thanksgiving. Every year we make our own Advent calendar, and it contains, not candy, but fun family activities to do, and a verse to contemplate or discuss. We light the candles of the Advent wreath.

Year after year we have gone upstream against the flow of popular culture. Margo hates being the last person she knows to get a Christmas tree. We try to fill our watchful waiting with special activities: we get out the box of Christmas books, make cookies to give, go see Symphony of Lights. But as the years have passed, one seemingly insurmountable obstacle remains.

Advent preparation is supposed to lead to a joyous celebration of Christmas--all twelve days of Christmas. You know, all the holiday parties you have been attending since Thanksgiving? Technically that is when they should be. The concept is that you watch, wait, prepare...and then Christmas: party!!! Twelve days of festival celebration, culminating with Epiphany. But very, very few people celebrate like this any more. So for those of us who hold out, it's pretty lonely on December 26th.

In addition, with both parents working, putting off so much of the tree-getting, decorating, and present-wrapping truly leads to anxiety and stress. There just isn't enough time, and everything in the last week before Christmas feels crazy and rushed. We start out great, in peaceful contemplation, and hit December 17th or thereabouts by shifting into frenzied overdrive.

So this year, I am trying something new. Along with out usual Advent traditions, we are going to begin decorating, shopping and wrapping presents, planning menus, and even getting the tree earlier. Why? So that we can take our time with each activity and arrive at Christmas in the spirit of travelers who have journeyed to be the witnesses to a great event. So many years we have fallen into the holiday like bedraggled survivors of a bad rush hour.

I can't make American popular culture different. But I can find a way to create the kind of Christmas I believe in without being at war with everything around me. Whether you observe a religious Christmas, a secular Christmas, or any other religious or secular winter celebration, I hope you find ways to bring light into the darkness and warmth into these cold days at the end of the year.

Posted with Blogsy

Comments

Teacher Gifts

Today is the last day of school before the Winter Break. It’s a good time to remember the far-reaching nature of our public school system. You may not have children. You may have sent your children to independent schools. It matters not. You will be impacted one way or another. Yesterday I read a long thread on Facebook about several waves of illness in the schools right now. There’s influenza A and norovirus, I believe. And of course there’s COVID. Apparently in some individual schools the rate of illness is high enough for school admin to notify parents. When I was little the acceptable holiday gift for a teacher was one of those lovely floral handkerchief squares. (I don’t know what it was for male teachers. They were rare in my elementary years.) These days the range of teacher gifts is wider and I have fond memories of Target gift cards which I have written about before. I think it’s safe to say that giving one’s teacher Influenza, norovirus, or COVID is not the ideal holiday...

They Can Wait

This is not a typical Saturday post. That’s because, in my community, it’s not a typical Saturday. Oakland Mills High School, after years of deferred repair, needs massive renovation. It’s pretty simple: when you don’t fix a problem it gets bigger. The school system itself said the the OMHS school building was "no longer conducive to learning" back in 2018. 2018 . But Thursday the Boad of Education voted to push it out of the lineup of important projects which will be given the go-ahead to proceed soonest. In my opinion it’s a terrible decision and sets a dangerous precedent. To explain, here’s the advocacy letter I sent in support of Oakland Mills High School. I was rather proud of it. I am writing to ask you to proceed with needed renovation at Oakland Mills High School in the most timely and comprehensive manner humanly possible. I have read the letter sent to you by the Oakland Mills Community Association and I am in complete agreement. You are extremel...

Separate and Unequal

Remember “Separate but equal”? Remember how that really meant that Black schools languished in broken-down buildings without adequate heat or toilet facilities, with cast-off, ragged learning materials, underfunded and largely ignored? The Supreme Court struck that down in 1954. The evidence was clear that separate was not equal. Plessy v Ferguson had led to - - no, endorsed - - deeply unequal schooling and opportunities. We tend to think of Brown v Board as being purely about racial integration. It was not. It was about the logical consequences of segregation. And they were not, not, not equal. The ruling in 1954 didn’t transform public education for non-whites into a land of milk and honey by any means. But it articulated some essential truths in a way that made including everyone a legal precedent which could be relied upon and built upon. It was better than what came before it but it rested upon unsteady ground. It did not necessarily change the hearts or minds ...

Village Green/Town²

Search This Blog