Norman Knight: Advent-uring into a new tradition

It is possible, even likely, we are establishing a new holiday tradition this year. For the remaining days until Christmas, Becky and I will be opening each day a door on our Advent calendars. Using history as my guide, and considering how the rest of the family loves to observe periodic rituals, I feel safe in predicting this latest event most surely will be added to our long list of family holiday celebrations.

It will be a new tradition—for me anyway. As a child, I was in the dark as to what an Advent calendar was all about. Oh, I would notice them as I walked store aisles. Based on the colors on the box and the season of year I figured they had something to do with the Christmas season. But no one in my immediate or extended families ever brought home an actual Advent calendar so as to enlighten this young boy.

Becky, on the other hand, remembers that as a young girl one grandmother had given her family an Advent calendar each holiday. Her daughters Amanda and Rachel grew up with them and now the grandkids are incorporating Advent calendars in their holiday consciousness. Different families have different holiday rituals, I guess.

Being mostly ignorant of them when I was young, I found it curious to learn that Advent calendars were first used by German Lutherans in the 19th century. I guess that particular tradition didn’t make it to the small Lutheran church I attended as a child.

Advent calendars take their name from the celebration of Advent, the first season in the Christian liturgical calendar. “Advent” means “coming” and celebrates both the approaching birth of Christ as well as His Second Coming. Traditional European Advent calendars will have religious themes such as manger scenes or perhaps secular images involving Saint Nicolas or winter weather. Advent calendars have doors, pockets or flaps of papers marking each calendar day of the season starting either on Advent Sunday or December first. Each individual day might contain a poem, a verse, an image or a small gift of candy or a toy.

Over the years, this established model and meaning of Advent calendars have evolved, as things tend to do in our modern world, into a secular marketing opportunity. Today, not only can I buy a Mini Christmas Village Countdown Advent Calendar complete with houses, trees and other decorative items, I can snag a Harry Potter or Lego Star Wars Advent calendar. One person we know buys an Advent calendar with daily treats for her cats. Why not?

This year Becky drove with her daughter Amanda to do some Christmas shopping. One of the stops was so Amanda could purchase a box-sized Advent calendar filled with 24 small bottles of wine of various vintages. She was also after an Advent cheese calendar. Amanda had done this last year, so it was like a continuing tradition for her. Becky decided to bring home boxes for us and extra ones for Daughter Rachel. Now the three households can share in an Advent calendar ritual together while apart. Just we adults, of course. Well, the grandkids will probably want to share the daily cheese choice which might present its own challenges as the four grandkids decide how to divvy up the dice-sized bit of cheese.

Personally, I’m not too concerned that Advent calendars with secular themes will distract us much as long as we keep in mind the original purpose of the calendars. Seems to me Advent is a time for reflection about the coming of hope and grace into the world. If offering cats a treat helps you focus on these gifts, Why not?

Norman Knight, a retired Clark-Pleasant Middle School teacher, writes this weekly column for the Daily Journal. Send comments to [email protected].