Short Notice

There are different opinions about when it is appropriate to put up your Christmas tree and other decorations. For some, it flies in the face of the fact of Advent, a time of waiting for the arrival of the Christ Child. In theory, these folks say, it’s inappropriate to decorate for Christmas while we’re still in the waiting time.

My mother was an advocate of this philosophy. She was a working mother, a schoolteacher, and my father worked long hours in a warehouse. Still, our tree was erected after I went to bed on Christmas Eve. It was decorated, and the gifts were placed under it. Since I was an only child, I did get lots of lovely little presents, within the capacity of my parents’ very modest income, and they were wrapped in festive paper with bright bows.

I was a morning child, and usually awoke on Christmas morning at 5:30 or 6:00 a.m. I couldn’t open presents until my parents were up to supervise me, so of course, I went to their room and roused them. “Santa’s come, and there are presents,” I cried out. “We have to get up!”

My poor parents. That said, I was the precious child that they finally had via adoption, and they loved my enthusiasm.

I think about that when I hear sniffing about Christmas decorations from the purists. My parents tried for a long time to have a child. Like many of the couples in Scripture, they were unsuccessful in having a child of their own bodies. Thank goodness, they were able to have a child of their hearts – me!

My mother got a call on December 22nd from the adoption agency, saying that they had a baby for her and that they should come and retrieve me the next day. There was no time to prepare, but she got a day off work – the last day before Christmas vacation – and my father did as well. They drove to retrieve me on the 23rd in a driving snowstorm. My mother had no idea how she was going to put together all the baby things she and I would need, because she had no family left to support her. When they got home with me, she fashioned a crib of sorts from a wooden soda crate (my dad worked for Canada Dry) with towels and a blanket. A neighbor brought some other items to keep me cared for until the stores reopened on December 26th. She told me that if she had had just a day or two’s more warning, she could have welcomed me home with all the usual accoutrements. But there was no time to prepare.

By the way, she had already invited my father’s extended family for Christmas dinner, and that couldn’t be changed, so she was juggling a big meal as well as a new baby. At least she had already bought the groceries for the dinner.

There’s a picture of that dinner, with my mother holding me close and my father looking rather shell-shocked as his aunt and uncle look confused. No time for preparation for this unusual turn of events, but a blessing nonetheless.

I mention this story because those of us who participate in our Adult Forum have been thinking about Mary’s pregnancy, and how ill-prepared she might have felt, particularly after the journey to Bethlehem. Just as my mother felt ill-prepared for this surprise Christmas present. Perhaps for her, the business of waiting until Christmas Eve night to decorate the tree was a remembrance of the beautiful chaos of my arrival.

That was her right, of course. Her house, her rules. But in a way, my love of decorating in the early days of Advent is about that nesting impulse that women who are about to give birth feel, getting everything ready so the baby will feel welcomed. I was up on a stepstool pasting a border up on the wall of the nursery a week before my first baby arrived. For the record, this isn’t a recommended practice!

My point here is that whether we feel called to prepare before the celebration of the Christ Child or whether we feel like we want to wait for Christmas Eve as my late, sainted mother did, either option is fine. We are still looking forward to the celebration of the arrival. There is no wrong way to prepare. Christ will still show up, as He did two millennia ago, and as he does every day of our lives. For that, we give most hearty thanks!

Be blessed and be a blessing-

Mary+