As we approach the closing of the year, do we eagerly wait for Christmas? A time to rest, a time for peace, a time to enjoy family, and a time to celebrate the birth of our Lord. In a sad statement of these secular times, though, Christmas is only celebrated one day of the year. A majority of people celebrate in an entirely too materialistic way before the twenty-fourth of the month has even begun, and then as soon as Christmas day has passed, it is forgotten in view of the great party that is New Year’s Eve. Christmas is hyped, marketed and then dropped by the power of the consumerism that has overtaken so many of us. While this may sound like despair, we must be grateful that the Church has a period in the liturgical calendar to combat this vapid consumption: Advent.

Christmas is not just about the gifts, this point should be obvious, but it bears  repeating. Advent prepares our mind to embrace the true spirit of Christmas. After the Feast of Christ the King, we seem to enter Advent as if it were any other time of the year. We forget that Advent is the time of preparation, for ourselves, to meet our Lord in the manger. Advent is the beginning of the new Liturgical Year for the Church as we now humbly prepare ourselves to await His arrival.

We sit in silence, pondering, praying, and working, till the last days of Advent. We are encouraged to take our faith more seriously. We give, not just material gifts, but time to our dear ones. We visit Christ more during this time in the chapels. We give alms, we partake in the sacraments, we attend Mass, we pursue works of charity. We practice the gifts of the Holy Spirit even more greatly in this time, especially patience with our loved ones during feast times. 

We sing, we pray our alms, we suffer in the cold and dark night. This and more we do all out of love and reverence for our Lord. The modern world has changed the pre-Christmas period so that the Christian forgets Advent. It wishes to pervert all of the specialty, beauty, and joy of the great feasts by making it only a footnote and an average day for the Christian mind that his heart won’t even realize it until the festivities pass. 

But this war on Christmas is precisely why Advent is important. It tells us that the glory to come is worth it, but the banquet first must be set. The soul of man must leave this world and Advent redirects him to remember this. Like with Lent, Advent, points us to what is extremely important-Christ himself. And to emulate our Lord, we must wait like the ancestors of the Old Testament. In all those frigid nights, in all those quiet moments, in all those times when not even bread was on the table-all Advent teaches us is that it is with great humility we wait. We can do no otherwise.