It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. It’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas, too. It’s hard not to get in on the spirit with the lights all out and the Christmas tree displayed. My family has yet to put up the belen but it’s coming soon and tonight on the first Sunday of Advent, we’ll be lighting the first candle.
And I can definitely taste the anticipation in the air. My students are a lot more energetic than usual and I wonder sometimes if their brains are not already on holiday. I know half of my brain is on vacation already. What’s not to look forward to? The good food, the cheerful get-togethers?The Christmas bonus?The family reunions?The buying and receiving of gifts? It’s a great time to be alive, Christmas is.
And yet I wonder, how after 30 years of celebrating Christmas, I still get excited. My birthday gets a little more anti-climatic every year. But Christmas has never lost its joy. And the anticipation of Christmas is still as strong as it once was when I was 6. I would have thought that I’d get tired of it by now. Gotten used to everything. But thank God I haven’t.
Maybe it’s because the older I get, the more I realize that the beauty of celebrating Christmas is really the chance of reliving the experience every time. Unlike a birthday when only one person gets the chance to feel special, Christmas is like everyone celebrating his birthday along with the rest of the world. Everyone gets to feel special because everyone gets the ultimate gift—not just of the knowledge of the birth of Christ but of the entire experience of that birth. We get to relive the joy that must have been in Mary’s heart that the long awaited Savior was coming. We get to relive the gratitude that must have been in Joseph’s soul that he was allowed to be a part of it. We get to relive the awe that the shepherds must have felt on their way to the cave. We get to relive the excitement of the Magi as they followed the star.
This reliving of the waiting, the anticipating, the expecting reminds us that our whole lives are spent in waiting. That there is something out there better than what is here. That there is a better world than this.That we can be better people than who we are. That sometime in the future, the God who came as a child, will come to visit us again.
And that I think is what the season of Advent is all about. It is the season of preparing. Of repenting.Of anticipating.Of having faith. That God always keeps his promises.