When to celebrate

Advent

I'm an incarnation-celebration fan.  But in trying to think of how to prepare our kids for Christmas I re-remembered that Advent is really meant to be a season of more penitence than celebration.   And Advent is a reminder of two comings; the first incarnation and Christ's second coming.  Our sin led God to send and sacrifice his only Son and when Christ comes again, he expects to find us ready and righteous.  This is the major point of Advent.  And I don't think that has much to do with all the things I love most about Christmas.  

So, I'm trying to get my head around that.  For myself, but also for what we want to teach the kids.  

Here are some my "now I know in part" issues with the whole pre-Christmas celebrate mode/pre-Christmas somber mode: 

1. Just related to calendar:  I think the complicating factor is that the worldly/culturally normal thing is to "celebrate" Christmas from Thanksgiving-Christmas.  I.e. it would be hard to pull off the celebration aspect of Christmas from Dec 25-Jan 6th.  And hard to pull of a real mode of "penitence" for the month preceeding Christmas-- especially if you are not surrounded by a faith community and general community following those believes and practices. 

2. We're in Uganda, and for good and ill, much of our expat community is here in different patches of the six weeks surrounding Christmas so you do feel that some special events should happen regardless of the exact timing within the liturgical calendar.

3.  We're in Uganda and there is generally less fanfare in any of these "material" seasons... so it feels justifiable to make the most out of the one season that is available to us (Mark has time off, kids have time off of school, life seems to slow down and allow for "celebratory" events.)

4. Generally speaking, we seem to lack the weather seasons so it feels nice to be able to mark a season of the year so specifically--with decorations, music, certain foods, parties and events. 

I will have lots of thoughts this month on Advent and Christmas and life here and life as a parent and life as a Christian and life as a sensory-liver...  

I think the part of Advent and the whole Christian message is that we're always in a mode of "already and not yet"--- And acknowledging the two "comings" of Christ are in that theme.  Mary Bartels bounded over to me one day recently and had a "whisper" for me-- "We're like God because Jesus was a baby". I felt I was supposed to be correcting her, "No, God became like us."  Somewhere in all this mystery is the reality that our human nature is divine and that our human nature is wretched.  And both those truths resonate with me in my personal experience of my selfishness and limitations and my moments of full delight in the human experience.   And all of this is wrapped up in my ambivalence about what mood to strike with Christmas --and when. :)