Well, not quite, but it is December.

I lugged the Christmas tree box up my apartment steps about an hour ago, along with two other boxes of festive paraphernalia. I should probably put the Christmas tree up and get rid of the boxes before I have visitors over this evening.

However… I do have to write a prayer for Church tomorrow, make sure I’ve prepped for an inter-school presentation on Monday, take a look at a website I was involved with the production of and give my tick of approval… and finish my year ten reports that were supposed to be done by yesterday.

Don’t you love December?

Added to the list of the “total-crazy” that usually happens around this time of year I’ve decided that I’m going to do an advent blog ie. write a blog every day in December up until Christmas.

(At about 10:30pm tomorrow night, I reckon I’ll be regretting it already)

But I do love Christmas… a lot.

And for that very reason I find it particularly difficult to put myself in HNAC Alison’s shoes on this thing called ‘Advent’. There’s so much that is a part of this time of year that has stuff to do with Jesus and also so much stuff that has nothing to do with the baby in the manger at all.

So it’s really hard to put myself in the HNAC space on this one.

Being the English teacher that I am, I’m starting with a definition (thanks Google…)

/ˈadv(ə)nt,ˈadvɛnt/  noun

1. the arrival of a notable person or thing. “the advent of television”  synonyms: arrival, appearance, emergence, materialisation, surfacing, occurrence, dawn, origin, birth, rise, development, approach, coming, looming, nearing, advance
2. the first season of the Church year, leading up to Christmas and including the four preceding Sundays

I love all those synonyms (yes, this post is really a literacy lesson disguised as a spiritual discussion).

Those synonyms are great.

They are what Christmas is all about: arriving.

But not just any arrival, it’s the emergence of something new. The materialisation of what was expected but not yet seen. The coming to the surface of what was hidden. The dawn of a new era.

The Jews had been waiting for it for years. They’d read about it in their sacred writings.

They were waiting for a political saviour, instead they got a baby in a manger.

I think that’s one aspect of Christmas I like. It tells us we’re waiting for something special and that the special things in life will eventually materialise.

Yet it also tells us to look somewhere different to where we might expect to find them.

Yours in waiting,

Alison