Advent

We had an Advent calendar, purchased when the children were young that I never liked very much.  A wall hanging of a gold-knobbed Christmas tree above 25 tiny pockets stuffed with festive items like toys or candy canes or reindeer heads or Santa’s disembodied face, it was hauled out every December 1^st   (when I remembered) from the attic eave where it had been gathering dust since the previous January. The calendar was soft, and made of cloth, because in those fraught days of rearing four children under the age of five, I had learned the hard way, many times over, of the perils of having fragility within the easy reach of small, curious hands. So I passed over lovely advent medieval styled structures made of wood with hinged doors, and I passed over cardboard Gothic churches with stained glass windows, and there was even something from the Metropolitan Museum of Art that I had my eye on, but ultimately Lillian Vernon won the day and so began eighteen years of something I didn't even know was a sacred and cherished family tradition, until this year, when the calendar went missing. I had, of course, forgotten that I had thrown it out with the rest of the post-Christmas detritus two years ago, until inquiries were made by my eldest daughter and my eldest son hazily recollected my perceived betrayal. It must be understood that the calendar was discarded because it was broken; nevertheless, howls of outrage emanated from upstate New York, and western Massachusetts, and Hell’s Kitchen, and Bushwick, where the children are now scattered, in college, or starting their independent lives.

The reason it took two years for this lack of my foresight to come to light was that last year, at this time, our family was still displaced by the after-affects of Hurricane Sandy and the holiday I managed to hobble together after the devastation of the region, our neighborhood, and our home, was rather meager compared to previous bacchanals. Bereft of well-loved and remembered decorations, because frankly, there was not an inch to spare as the six of us were crammed into two upstairs rooms, I remember how grateful I was for the invention of etiquette, for that thin veneer of politeness was what prevented us from killing each other. And so we lived to see another Christmas.

I question the value of an Advent Calendar now - especially because, for our family, it is purely secular.  Is it time to declare a moratorium on childhood pursuits such as countdowns to presents? Or is there something else at work here, a kind of seasonal alchemy that revisits the magic - and surely there is no greater magic in this world than happily remembered childhood Christmases - and solidifies the grace and love of family?