Here & Now

By JULIE A. LARY
Writer.

Growing up Jewish, my worldview of Advent was paper calendars with perforated windows that opened, revealing slightly stale pieces of chocolate. In recent years, these inexpensive calendars morphed into collections of toys, fishing lures, and rubber ducks. Polished rocks, plastic dinosaurs, and even tiny bottles of whiskey and wine—one for each of the twenty-four days of Advent.

Is this truly the meaning of Advent?

Recently, I pondered this question while watching a community concert featuring a community and high school choir. As they sang, “Here We Come A-Wassailing,” I realized that Advent is permission to spread joy. It’s an excuse to bake and eat colorful holiday cookies and gingerbread houses, indulge in fruitcake and stollen, cheeseballs and baked brie. It’s attending parties with tables overflowing with holiday foods. It’s stirring hot chocolate with a candy cane and pouring eggnog into your coffee and anything else that calls for a splash of milk. . .

It’s carte blanche to put wreaths and phony reindeer antlers on the front of your car. To wear silly Santa and elf hats and those headbands with springy balls on top. Donning ugly sweaters in the hope of winning the prize for the ugliest one. It’s delighting—or humiliating—your kids and pets by dressing them in their finest to sit on Santa’s lap, fingers crossed for the camera.

Oh well, so much for capturing a memorable Christmas photo.

It’s climbing on ladders to put up holiday decorations, shopping for live trees (or assembling the plastic one). Hanging ornaments and tinsel. Setting up miniature villages and stringing lights.  It’s miles of ribbons and bows, wrapping papers and boxes, holiday cards and catalogs. It’s not apologizing for the blow-up snowman, grinch, reindeer, and Santa on your front lawn. . .

It’s shopping for gifts along avenues hung with garlands and wreaths. Holiday music trickles down like icicles. Mariah Carey doesn’t want a lot for Christmas. A precocious girl wants a hippopotamus. And Frosty the Snowman goes thumpity thump, thump, thumpity, thump, thump.

It’s wandering through craft shows, sipping hot cider, and wanting to buy everything from crocheted scarves to wooden snowflakes, willowy fairies, and bearded gnomes. Pretty pottery and boxes of homemade fudge, birdhouses and turned wooden bowls, jewelry and trinkets, stuffed animals and quilts. And oh, so much more.

It’s a break from the humdrum. It’s permission to express yourself—whether caroling in your neighborhood or creating ornaments to hang on your tree…

Or simply enjoying the holiday spirit.