Celebrating the Advent season

Someday, our Advent will be magical and holy, full of candlelight and peppermints. For now, we live in a house full of fun with electric lights and cheap, Santa-shaped chocolates. It’s a long wait ‘til the 25th and we try hard to keep it heavenly.

Number 522 of the Catholic Catechism states, “The coming of God’s Son to earth is an event of such immensity that God willed to prepare for it over centuries. He makes everything converge on Christ: all the rituals and sacrifices, figures and symbols of the ‘First Covenant’. He announces him through the mouths of the prophets who succeeded one another in Israel. Moreover, he awakens in the hearts of the pagans a dim expectation of this coming.”

Number 524 states, “When the Church celebrates the liturgy of Advent each year, she makes present this ancient expectancy of the Messiah, for by sharing in the long preparation for the Savior’s first coming, the faithful renew their ardent desire for his second coming. By celebrating the precursor’s birth and martyrdom, the Church unites herself to his desire: ‘He must increase, but I must decrease.’”

Now, the celebration and awaiting parts we’ve got down, as we transform both our physical space and spiritual practices, striving to capture those magical, holy moments. Here’s how we do it on a tight budget:

I fling rectangles of red cloth over every possible horizontal surface. I don’t know how to use a sewing machine so the edges are cut with pinking shears to prevent fraying (although this year, several children have expressed interest in hand sewing and I plan to channel that into hemming some red calico).

I wrap and ribbon-tie all existing pictures on our walls so that they look like presents.

I shamelessly twirl tiny white lights around every curtain rod. The ambiance is close to candle-like, especially for half-asleep, tired parents.

We drag out a Rubbermaid full of books, music, and movies that appear for Advent and disappear at Epiphany on Jan. 6, 2015. We read one book from the collection aloud each evening.

For many years, I’ve bought a new nativity set and there are currently 12 to place. Last year was tighter financially, however, so I saved toilet paper rolls for a few weeks (you do not want to know how many this family of nine amassed in that time) and the younger kids turned them into nativity characters.

I play beautiful music at home to offset the silly stuff on the car radio, which I still play. Susan Boyle, Bing Crosby, Julie Andrews, Josh Groban, and Boston Pops are a few of my favorites.

We re-memorize verses like Isaiah 9:6, “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” and John 1:14, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

We recite the Saint Andrew prayer together morning and evening and with each meal: “Hail and blessed be the hour and moment in which the Son of God was born of the most pure Virgin Mary, at midnight, in Bethlehem, in piercing cold. In that hour, vouchsafe, O my God! to hear my prayer and grant my desires, through the merits of Our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of His Blessed Mother. Amen.”

I’m too craft-delinquent to manage a Jesse Tree project (12 sections that chronicle God’s plan of the Incarnation since the beginning of time), but we do read about it and color trees with representative pictures.

There are several feast days for Catholics during Advent. Dec. 6 is for Saint Nicholas (take a peek at the glories of stnicholascenter.org), Dec. 8 is for the Immaculate Conception (a holy day of obligation to honor babies, life plans, and love in Mary), and Dec. 9 and 12 are for Juan Diego and Our Lady of Guadalupe (where this Irish girl does her best to serve South American food).

And the smartest thing we do to keep the “ardent desire” for an “event of such immensity” is to attend Christ’s Mass, Christmas, in the morning before opening any presents. Yes, we make them wait. Barreling down the stairs with morning breath and a need but refusal to go to the bathroom is a sorry display that is over in less than an hour. After the kids open their stockings, it’s back upstairs to wash and dress for church. It truly, tangibly puts Jesus first. The rest of the day is a perfect mix of holy and hilarious.

Let us keep in mind the words from “O Come, O Come Emmanuel”:

“O come, Desire of nations, bind / in one the hearts of all mankind; / bid Thou our sad divisions cease, / and be Thyself our King of peace.”

Allison Howell and her family are longtime residents of the Valley. They are Catholic converts and keep a hobby farm full of animals and children.

Opinions expressed on the Faith page are the author’s and are not necessarily those of the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman, its staff or its parent company, Wick Communications Co. To submit a column or other news for the Faith page, send email to news@frontiersman.com, or call 352-2250.