Three Ways to a Better Advent
The Church New Year begins with Advent and is a season of preparation ahead of the birthday of Jesus. Beginning four Sundays before Christmas Day, it’s intended to be a period of intensified spiritual activity.
Yet this time of year for most families is already over-full. Between graduations, corporate Christmas parties and extended retail hours, it’s peak busyness.
In all this busy-work and busy-play, it’s easy for us to lose sight of the guest of honour, arriving at his birthday utterly exhausted. Here are three ideas to reset our Advent.
1: Time Wrangling
Our time is a precious resource, and we so often feel rushed and time poor. We personally pack a lot into our lives and then complain of being too busy and feeling stressed.
Yet, if we want to live more intentionally, we need to acknowledge that ‘time scarcity’ is a choice. Only then can we proactively wrangle our time so that it is available for the things we truly value like our relationships.
We can start by decluttering our social calendar as much as possible. There are some things we can’t avoid, but there are many others that can be declined or moved to another time.
If saying ‘no’ to a social invitation is challenging, it helps to think about why this is so. We may need to acknowledge that our FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) has too much power in our life.
We often make commitments to finish something by Christmas so we can start fresh in the New Year. But is this truly a hard deadline, or a psychological one?
What if, instead of making Christmas Eve the default deadline, we made Christ the King of our deadlines (pun intended), and aimed to wrap up those projects before Advent?
2: Limit the Space Invaders
In the developed world, our homes are increasingly cluttered with stuff – mostly stuff we don’t really need or even like. These space invaders deplete rather than enrich our quality of life.
Every family will have some members for whom ‘gift giving’ is the penultimate expression of love. For these members, Christmas without some material gifts would be bleak and loveless.
But material gifts don’t need to be big or expensive. Home-baked goods prepared with a prayer, or a thoughtful card are precious gifts of the heart.
One of the best Christmas’ we ever had was the year our families wrote letters of affirmation and made promises of service and kindness to each other. These included things like a promise to do a chore without complaints, or to babysit so the parents could have a date night.
Some ‘gifts’ were simply a letter expressing appreciation for the other and listing the things for which we were particularly grateful. Forty years later, we’re still talking about it. That was Advent well spent.
3: Spiritual Gains
The word ‘advent’ means ‘coming.’ The intent of the season is to orientate our hearts towards Jesus so that he might ‘come’ more fully into our lives.
Busyness and stress make it hard to be spiritually receptive so if we really can’t dial those back, let’s lean in and sanctify them.
Rather than complaining about our stress, we can make it an offering to God. Contemplating how stressed Joseph might have been trying to protect his family from a homicidal King Herod, we can ask him to pray for us.
For each day of Advent, we can dedicate the busyness of that day for the intentions of a loved one. With a photo or their name kept visible, we can make a one-minute prayer for them at coffee and meal breaks.
Christmas is all about relationships – with our families and with Jesus. This year let’s use Advent well to reclaim our time and space for these higher values.
Francine & Byron Pirola are the cofounders of SmartLoving. www.smartloving.org
Find more family-friendly tips for Advent and Christmas at www.cathfamily.org
