E-note 12/10: Advent Traditions

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

One of the traditions we keep in our home each year is a careful marking of the days before Christmas. With a scrupulousness that waxes and wanes we try to live the days of Advent with punctures of heavenly light. Sometimes it is the felt Jesse Tree that Jen made ten years ago that guides us to the star over Bethlehem. Each day a felt square is turned after a scripture reading. Each turned square reveals an icon of great significance in the unfolding drama of Christ's redemption. Each day something hidden is revealed. Other years we have marked these days with a simple table-top Advent wreath made with mismatched candles. Sometimes even tea candles will do. A candle is lit each night to prophesy the coming light of the Savior.

But this year all our own traditional devices were preempted in mid-November when a friend's gift from Germany arrived. John and Barb Findley, old friends from Wisconsin (who have lived in Germany and now live in Florida) sent us a "house of sweets" to mark the days of Advent. Every day you are to pull out a little box from the larger house. Each box is numbered with a day of the month and each box is filled with a German cookie of some sort. We have found that German cookies are an acquired taste no matter how much chocolate they have been bathed in. But even so, when you mix the longing to see what is hidden with the sweetness of chocolate it is very difficult for a child to forget about "tonight's box!" Mom and dad, of course, intensify the longing by requiring a reading and prayer before each box is opened.

So I am thankful this year for 25 little boxes of Christmas cookies from Germany. I am thankful because they do what our Advent tradition always aims to do: they mock the idols of efficiency and consumerism that do not slumber in our hearts at Christmas time. I am also thankful for the new thing the cookies from Germany do for our family tradition: they sweeten it, literally. The expectation of something sweet has aided our remembering daily worship this year in ways that readings alone have not. Sweetening our family worship time with chocolate and sugar is not an idea that a bibliophile like me would come to naturally. I tend to be suspicious of gimmicks and tricks and treats encroaching on worship. But because I, in every way, am a flawed son of Adam, I am flawed even in my suspicions. In fact, it is easy for me to become suspicious of childhood itself, a darkness that if left untended can keep me from entering the Kingdom of God (see Mark 10:15). So thanks be to God for gifts not wanted nor expected. Which reminds me, get a child you love Eugene Peterson's book, The Christmas Troll. It sweetens the message of Christmas for children in surprising and satisfying ways. Grace and peace, John