This sermon was given at Stevens Memorial Chapel by Rev. Judith Campbell on December 1, 2002.

A Different Kind of Advent: One We Can Live With

When my kids were little, and Christmas was still magical as well as frenetic, one year I got them an Advent calendar. It was a rather nice handmade affair that a neighbor was making and selling. You hung it on a door and it had 25 little pockets, and in each little pocket there was a little wooden decoration. And on each of the 25 days before Christmas, we would carefully take out an ornament, and hang it by its little gold safety pin on the green felt Christmas tree that was stitched above the little row of pockets. The one to go up last, on December 25, was a minuscule nativity scene…which after a few years of use, was a little the worse for wear. Poor Mary had been re-glued a number of times, the teeny camels were long gone and the missing Jesus had been replaced by a "Q" tip with a face painted on it. But it was tradition and we loved it, at least I did. By the time the kids were bored teenagers, I think I was the only one who got excited looking in the pockets and hanging up the dented little treasures; but every so often, when they didn’t think I was looking, one of those big oafs would sidle up to the faded and by now very wrinkled old Advent calendar and peek in the very last pocket just to make sure. Not all of their childhood was behind them.

That particular Advent calendar is long gone. Clearly I remember it and its maker fondly. But I have noticed over the years the proliferation of Advent calendars available, everything from chocolate Advent calendars, wooden and cardboard ones, and most recently…electronic Advent calendars, which are available over the internet!

I can deal with the Advent calendars. Many of them are very imaginative, and they’re fun! But much more distressing for me and everybody else (other than retailers) is the mass marketing hysteria that precedes December 25th. Actually, I’m pretty sure it’s distressing for retailers too, but to look at a holiday that is rooted in antiquity, as a time when we acknowledge the darkness and prepare for the return of The Light…and to see it has become a fulcrum upon which the NASDAQ and the Dow Jones Industrial will rise and fall and a time when so-called "civilized nations" work themselves into a feeding frenzy of greed and accumulation and gift-giving one-ups-man-ship is sad indeed. No, it’s more than sad. It’s crazy and it’s an integral part of our gross - and I do mean Gross - national product! And really I don’t know if that is going to change as we continue to spiral upward and out of control.

Let’s go back to Advent calendars. They’re fun. For anyone interested, there is a really cute one on the internet, the address is here if anyone wants it for their kids or grandkids…or themselves! (Cyber-Advent…what will it be next??) This one is Rev. Judy approved. I found it last year, when I was researching last year’s sermon on the subject. There is even a pagan coloring page on it, with depictions of Stonehenge and spirals, and images of Celtic, pagan and pre-Christian symbols for kids to color. The site is based in Iceland and has a number of worldwide midwinter holiday traditions for kids to play with and learn from. It also offers two Advent calendars to enjoy. But the little cyber doors will only open on the appropriate day. So eager peekers have to be patient. I know, I tried…and was cyber scolded, and I got my mouse slapped!

As I said earlier, Christian Advent was preceded by a much older pagan tradition of preparing for the darkest day and the longest night of the year. It was a period of fasting and atonement and penitence really, so that the fickle Gods that ruled the movements of the sun would look kindly on these muddled and fearful humans and return the light to them after the darkness. Hence, the lighting of candles, and burning of fires and Yule logs, to remind them (and those irritating Gods) of the Light and its power and its promise to return after the lengthening, darkening days of the coming winter. It was a time of in-gathering and storing and preparing for a long siege of dark and cold. Early Christians found this a handy ritual to convert into a time of preparation for the coming of the celebration of the birth of Jesus, which itself was conveniently relocated and re-dated to fit into the darkest period on the northern hemispheric solar calendar. It made the spread and establishment of Christianity much easier if the Christian festivals and holidays coincided with older established festivals that were already in place.

So Advent is a time of preparation, and, for many of us, utter madness. There is the family madness. Who is going to visit who and when, and for how long? Scores are kept, and settled and grudges are held and reinforced. This gets particularly tricky when families have re-configured themselves. Step-dads and moms, blended families, newly acquired grandparents and dearly departed all figure in the frenetic and harrowing preparation for "THE HOLIDAYS".

Feelings, already on the edge of flashpoint, are on the verge of extinction. One way to get through the madness would be to simply cancel feelings and expectations and just plow through the whole thing in a pathetic mockery of the TV and magazine hyped bliss that sells so many Barbie Dolls, Nintendo Play stations, liquid anesthetic and Prozac.

Lists are made. Gift lists…who gets what, and what did I give them last year, and I hope I don’t give them the same thing because four years ago I got 17 of the damn things on sale and I’ve been giving them away ever since and I can’t remember to whom. And the person you have been trying to drop from the card or gift list for the last 20 years you know is going to show up with a dried out zucchini bread, or send you a four page single spaced teeny tiny typed TOME of comings and goings of the world’s most boring and prolific family.

If this is sounding alarmingly to terrifyingly familiar, take heart! Help is on the way! I offer to you and you alone, for $19.95 if you call in right now, the new improved antidote to the madness: the Un-Advent calendar, brought to you by the revster here and UUSMV. (This could be our next BIG fund raiser!) And if you call in before the sermon is over, I’ll throw in a battery operated flaming chalice lapel ornament or tie tack which will illuminate brilliantly at the drop an attitude or a platitude; you choose.

The Un-Advent calendar is a subtractive calendar. And here is how it works. Today is Dec. 1st, so we can all begin together. Each day, starting today, consciously ELIMINATE something that you THINK you have to do, .but the world will not stop if you don’t. These differ for each of us, so be selective. We do not have to scour the underside of the front steps or wash and wax the driveway for house guests. We do not have to buy EVERY kind of alcoholic beverage available in the western world just in case "Uncle Tibbler" wants variety. We do not have to have 17 homemade pies on Christmas day. We can buy one, or skip the whole thing, and have Jello! We could follow the Jewish tradition, and have take-out Chinese on paper plates even, and then go to a movie!

All nasty Martha Stewart jokes aside, (and there are some hysterical ones) we are being pressured from all sides: family, the media, even organized Religion (that’s surely not us, because we are anything but organized) to do-do-do and buy-buy-buy, so we can give-give-give and get-get-get if we are born rich and lucky! But, if we are poor and disenfranchised, we are reminded hourly of what will never be ours and we try to explain it to ourselves and to our children, who are being brainwashed as well by the relentless media madness in the name of the holidays. Some Advent!

But you know what??? More than any other denomination that I can think of, we can make a change. And it’s not because most of us are not Christians, so Christmas in the traditional religious sense requires no particular religious or denominational duties. But we can be as just as susceptible as anyone else when it comes to media hype and peer and family pressure and needing to "look good" or keep up appearances over the "Holidays". The difference is that religiously and spiritually and historically, we are the ones who say, "Hang on a minute! This doesn’t make sense!". And now more than ever before we need to revive that tradition. "Hang on a minute! This doesn’t make sense!" But only you can say it and mean it.

We could, for example, not try to visit every single family member in the extended and blended family enclave within the critical 36 hours, stopping only long enough at each checkpoint to take off a coat and hat, swig a drink or a cup of tea, flip some gifts in the general direction of a vaguely familiar relative and belt out the door again in the mad scramble to make it to the next one in time to make it to the next one. This is not tradition. This is madness. Everyone is short changed, and shorter tempered.

I have a friend who sends out her holiday cards and greetings in late January or early February, or sometimes March. "So they don’t have to compete with every thing else", she says". She likes to send out cards, and she likes to procrastinate. So she does both, and the cards are just as welcome, and she isn’t stressed out of her gourd, and I have time to read and savor her greeting. There’s a lesson here.We could cancel all the so called "Horror day" visiting and entertaining and instead extend it over the year. And we could do much the same with all of those other things we think we simply must do. Says who? Most likely you!

May I suggest….Go and get one of those new and improved un-Advent calendars. And starting today, make yourself a "won’t list", rather than a to-do list!

Instead of accumulating responsibilities like mosquito bites on a humid night in August, think about those things in the next 25 days that you simply won’t do and then as an added bonus, in the time that you have give yourself, you have my permission to breathe, smell a rose, daydream, nap, read a junk novel or even a good one, call or visit an old friend. And while you are doing it, .find those parts of you you lost when you put away those things you did as a child, and one by one, hang them up with their little gold safety pins in a place where everyone can see and enjoy them once again.

Blessed be!