advent Archives - Kristen Anne Glover

Advent

: Advent

At chapel, we nearly missed it. There was a scramble for candles and a lighter that worked and some verses to say because Advent had slipped in somewhere after the turkey, and we had almost missed it.

…even though the Christmas music has been playing in the stores since October.

…even though Black Friday came and went.

…even though seven pastors at chapel were waiting for it.

We were all waiting for it. And somehow, we all missed it.

Advent is like that: expected, but entirely surprising. All the time, we have known it was coming, and all the while, we were not ready.

We scramble, to be sure, and race and run and repeat traditions to try to be more prepared, for the love, because if we’re going to get one thing right, it is this. Christmas. Advent. We are going to be ready for Jesus, this time.

So we push everything earlier and begin expecting, waiting, wanting until we can hardly bear up under it.

This Advent is a heavy thing to carry for long. Something so full of expectation cannot be light. It bends us over with longing and trying. Oh, how we try. We try to be ready for Him. We try to be able to receive Him. We try to be worthy.

We try, and we groan under the weight of it. Awful expectation.

But suddenly, it is here. It is now. A Savior has come, and He steals our breath away like the sharp cold of an early morning. He comes in our darkest, in our weakest, in our least ready, because we could never be ready enough. All that trying, all that working, all that waiting is over as He rushes in with the Advent of rest, of abundant enough.

It is not about trying. It never was. It is not about ready. Who could be ready for a Savior? No matter how early we begin or how well we plan, we can never be ready enough for that. We can never clean up enough to welcome Him.

But when we are bent low with our workings and blinded by the futility of our own strivings, when we are empty of any other hope on this earth, we are most ready.

That is the trick of Advent.

And that is when He came. That is Advent: the coming of a Savior to those most needed to be saved, at the time when they most needed saving. At their darkest. At their lowest. At their least ready.

Into this world of constant-waiting and never-ready, He came. The weary world rejoices.

We can exhale now. We can stop, and wonder. In our weakness and divine unreadiness, we can welcome Him in. Are you tired? Are you behind before you have even begun? Then you are ready.

His Advent is for you.

Last Minute Advent Pendant

Cheery Advent pendant

My kids have been asking, “How many days until Christmas?” ever since the stores started hauling out the Christmas stuff.

So pretty much forever.

Now that it’s actually December, I wanted to give them a way to count down the days until Christmas without having to ask me thirty times a day (not that I don’t love that).

We have done Advent calendars in the past: you know, those flimsy little drug store calendars filled with tiny bits of chocolate that fall out on the wrong days and make kids cry. I’ve had stacks of them on top of my fridge every Christmas for the past few years, and I am always so happy to throw them away on Christmas Eve because they no longer look charming and everyone is kinda bitter about the fact that we spent actual money on them.

This year (read: yesterday) I decided I wanted to do something different. With Jeff deploying to Africa just a few weeks after Christmas, these days are precious. In one sense, the countdown to Christmas is also a countdown to his departure.

There is not enough chocolate in the world to make me want to count down to that.

Instead, I wanted to celebrate each day we have together, and each day we count down to the most glorious miracle of Christ’s birth, with a calendar that focuses on the time we have as a family.

Advent pendant garland over what my landlord calls “caramel” colored walls.

I decided to make an Advent pendant banner using Christmas card stock. Now, I thought of this brilliant idea at exactly 2:45 yesterday afternoon, and at exactly 2:45 yesterday afternoon, I realized I did not have Christmas card stock.

Off to Hobby Lobby I went. Except Hobby Lobby is closed on Sunday. Off to Walmart I went! Except Walmart was a bust. Off to Target I went (at this point, I was absolutely not going to be back in five minutes like I had promised). Target had one option for Christmas card stock, and after fighting my way through the crowds of people buying stuffed Olafs, I did not even care what the paper looked like. Christmas card stock: check!

I realized later that I could have used plain paper and it would have worked just fine. Alas.

Creating the pendants is a breeze. Each of my card stock squares was 6×6 inches, so I cut each square in half with my paper cutter (you can also use scissors). That gave me two 3×6 rectangles. I cut the rectangles from the top corners to the bottom center, giving me two triangle pendants from each square of card stock.

24 triangles later, I assembled my banner on a jute string using two dabs of hot glue on each corner of the pendants.

DIY Advent calendar

Viola! My Advent banner was assembled.

Now, your temptation at this point will be to make this more complicated than it needs to be. But mammas, it is December 1^st and you are thinking of making an Advent calendar. The over-achiever Christmas crafty train left way back in October.

We are now in Get ‘Er Done mode.

So, you could add decorations to your pendants. You could. Don’t.

Advent garland

I did add two little buttons on the ends of the jute string while I was waiting for my hot glue gun to heat up, but I gave myself a good talking to when I considered adding little decorations to each pendant. That’s crazy talk right there.

However, I happened to have a scalloped, round paper punch so I did punch out 24 circles for the dates. If you do not have a scalloped paper punch, do not panic. This step is completely optional. You could write the dates directly on the banners, or add bits of ribbon or strips of paper for the dates.

I affixed each date to a pendant using a big glob of hot glue to give dimension to the date circles. Once they dried, I ran my finger under the edge to make sure the date circles popped up a little.

Then, I simply wrote the dates on with gold Sharpie, flipped the banner over, and added a fun Advent activity to the back of each pendant.

Advent ideas

Could not be easier.

A simple, gold-Sharpied clothespin helps us keep track of the days. Just move it over one day as you count down to Christmas.

Advent pendant

Now, if you have trouble thinking of Advent activities, you’re probably trying to get on that over-achiever train again. Stop it. Christmas does not have to be crazy, bigger-than-life, or expensive to be wonderful. In fact, your Advent list can include many of the things you already do during the Christmas season:

*Bake cookies

*Watch The Nutcracker

*Go to the church Christmas program

*Have cocoa and candy canes

*Make a gingerbread house

*Read The Night Before Christmas

*Go caroling

*Make gifts for teachers and friends

*Deliver cookies to neighbors

*Attend a Christmas concert

*Take the Polar Express to look at Christmas lights

*Make snowflakes

*Go ice skating

*Make a Christmas craft

*Read the Christmas story

*Look at pictures of past Christmases

*Sip eggnog around the Christmas tree

*Make homemade marshmallows

*Watch Frosty the Snowman

*Read How the Grinch Stole Christmas

*Volunteer at a local charity

*Play in the snow!

*Reenact the Christmas story

*Draw names and do something nice for another family member

*Open ONE present (this is our activity for the last day of Advent–Christmas Eve!)

You get the idea. The goal is to be intentional about spending time together, doing the things you love to do, creating memories as a family. Each day, have the kids write about the activity on the back of that day’s pendant. After the Christmas season is over, you’ll have a memory to cherish.

And isn’t that better than cheap chocolate? Any day.

Countdown to Christmas

Linger

The coffee cup is hot in my hands. I sit under the Christmas tree in my empty house and loop my fingers through the warm handle, mesmerized by the twinkling lights reflected in the inky blackness of my cup.

The frenzy is over. All the Christmas presents have been opened and put away. Our guests have come and gone. Up in the loft, the air mattress exhales softly next to a pile of quilts waiting to be washed. The fridge is choked with leftovers and Christmas cookies grow stale on the counter. Five limp stockings hang by the fireplace.

Out in the world, under the rush of highways and the urgency of clocks that never cease, stores are hauling out next year’s calendars and Valentine’s candy.

The message rings loud and clear: Christmas is over. The curtain has closed on the show we’ve been building up to all year long, and there is nothing more to look forward to but the cold emptiness of January.

We’ve barely cracked Jesus out of the Styrofoam and plunked him in the manger on Christmas morning when it is time to pack him up again.

There’s something very backwards about that, I think, and I feel the need to linger here a little longer under the twinkling lights on the carefully-crafted stage, believing with all my heart that Christmas is not the end but the beginning.

All the awful expectation, the groaning under never-ending Advent days, the weariness of waiting for a cure that will not come—is over. He has come.

Finally, I am free. I am free from the empty striving of the holiday season and the vain attempts to produce peace and joy by my doings. Here, in the days after Christmas, I find my rest.

I sit in the midst of beautiful adornment and I think that now, now, all the glory is appropriate because now my rescuer has come. Now, the Son has dawned.

Now we can begin to celebrate, now when most everyone is packing away the ornaments and hauling the tree to the curb.

But oh, I do not want to pack it in now. I want to throw open the curtain, cut the ribbon, and begin here. I want to sit under the lights and let the incarnation in.

Linger.

Dwell.

Worship.

Wonder at the brightest beginning we could ever hope for, the beginning that trumps all other beginnings, the page-turner that leads into a beautiful New Year’s and lovely Valentine’s and the glorious climax of Easter.

This is where the story starts. Christmas day is over, but Christmas—Christ with us!—has just begun.