Written by Elaine Chatwin
What to do, what to do? I’ve known for a month that the Shared Life and Faith group would be meeting at my house in November. So the conversation began in my head, long ago, about the appropriateness of having my house decorated for Christmas in the midst of a daylong spiritual retreat… yikes, I mean how “adventy” is a snowman collection?
I was feeling pretty conflicted until my eyes rested on a sign I keep by my computer that says “BE YOURSELF everyone else is already taken”; and I need to remind myself about that every day because you know, I’m not actually Mother Teresa or some other divine being. So, there the answer was – be yourself Elaine, yup the snowman collection goes up the beginning of November every year and it needs to go up this year too.
I asked myself a lot of WHY as I went about my decorating and in the end, I think most of what happens in my corner of the world is actually very adventy. You see I began putting those snowmen out early as a way of dealing with an annual cycle of depression that always began in November. Don’t ask me why a snowman village makes my heart smile, but it does, and now I flow through the fall and winter with a happy heart just like the rest of the year.
What about the small Christmas tree in the living room… well that is my Children’s’ tree and I put that up early every year so that the children and grandchildren in my life have a tree and ornaments they can touch, move, and add to without a single frown – only love and hugs are found around that little tree. (Yes, even if the whole tree tips over!)
Oh and, there is the tree on my back porch too…. Well I put that out early one year and discovered my sister-in-law sees the lights on that tree every afternoon when she heads out to the barn to bring the horses and goats in. And, she told me how those lights make her heart smile, no matter how awful the weather or her day had been.
So in the end, I came to the conclusion that yes, a snowman village can be an alter when it is tending a bruised heart, and a Christmas tree can absolutely be a preparation of love when it embraces others and warms their hearts too. And, perhaps most importantly, advent is about Christ being born over and over in my heart in the midst of the secular world I live in. Advent – a radical preparing to open to the birth of Christ in my heart and the hearts of those I meet each and every day.