A Time to Keep: Entering Fully into Advent and Christmas in 2020

All of our holiday plans are likely going to look different this year. It’s a difficult reality, but perhaps an opportunity to look at the season with fresh perspective.

There are a lot of obstacles to celebrating well (read this post from Halloween for more on that), and the month or so leading up to Christmas is a good example of that. Rather than truly entering into the fullness of the Advent and Christmas seasons, our celebrating can turn into a frenzy of baking, buying, and bingeing very sub-par, jokingly identical (but let’s be honest, also really fun) holiday films. This year particularly, we are so worn thin by the events of 2020 that the Christmas season is presenting itself as a much-needed vat of “good cheer” in which, we hope, “our troubles will be miles away.”

This year, and every year going forward, I want to resist the temptation to “binge” Christmas.

I want to enter more fully into the season by cultivating for my family the real, true pleasures of this time of year. So I sat down with a pen and paper and I started brainstorming.

“A Time to Keep”

As I began planning for Advent, the phrase “a time to keep” kept coming to mind—such a rich phrase. It’s from the book of Ecclesiastes, chapter 3, where the writer says “For all things there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven,” followed by a list of just about every matter, including “a time to keep and a time to cast away.”

This phrase captures what it means to celebrate well.

On one level, it harkens to the idea of “keeping time” as in keeping time with music. Dancers, singers, musicians, all learn to keep time. It’s internalizing the rhythm that exists outside of yourself and acting in accord so you can be one with it. There’s a rhythm to the year, too, especially from a Catholic perspective, when you look at the liturgical year in which days and seasons are set aside for intentional fasting, feasting, and then dear old “ordinary” time.

On another level, to “keep a time” means to memorialize an event. To acknowledge its importance and keep remembering, keep celebrating it year after year in the same, ritualistic ways.

And finally “a time to keep” speaks to the idea of time itself as something that is received: a gift. “Keep” is such an interesting word. It implies that something first was given, and you were charged with a duty regarding it. To keep watch. To hold onto something on behalf of another person. “Keep” is an action, and yet one that requires very little of you except to watch, to hold, to rest, to be still until such time as there is a change: the owner of the thing returns and we hand it back, someone is seen approaching on the horizon and you no longer keep watch, but respond, welcome, and spread the news.

Advent and Christmas encapsulate all of this. A season of fasting, followed by a season of feasting: Rhythm. A season to memorialize the birth of Christ in that remote stable in Bethlehem: Remembrance. A season of keeping watch for the second coming of Christ, readying yourself for the gift of his mercy and his very self: Receiving.

So, what, practically, tangibly, do we do to live out these seasons?

Persevere in the Fast, Emphasize the Feasts

Advent is a season held in tension between penance and joy. As with much of our relationship with God, our souls really need a balance of fear of the Lord and a comfortable confidence in Him. Our preparation for His coming at Christmas should reflect both sides of that anticipation, but we can often end up living one extreme or the other. On the one hand, we can get swept up in the indulgent feasting that essentially celebrates Christmas too early and forgets Advent altogether. On the other, we can try to counteract that tendency by shunning the joy of the season and resolving to be morose and hungry until the 25th.

I really think the fasting and the joy that are both part of the anticipation for Christ can be complimentary rather than competing if we just give each its proper time. Advent lasts at most 28 days. In the midst of those 28 days, there are eight celebratory days, in particular, that stood out to me as I imagined our Advent traditions. These are:

• All 4 Sundays of Advent

• December 6: Feast of Saint Nicholas

• December 8: Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception (Mary’s Conception)

• December 12: Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe (Patron of the Americas)

• December 13: Feast of St. Lucy

For my family, I’m hoping these will be the days dedicated toward the celebratory-type of anticipation, and the remaining 20 days, the penitential-type of anticipation.

Below, if you’re interested in doing something similar, I’m including a calendar-of-sorts detailing how we plan to celebrate each of the above feasts, as well as the “big feasts” during the season of Christmas. These are not huge, complicated, expensive festivities. They are generally short, simple, but rich and meaningful additions to the day that aim to both teach the beauty of our faith and instill the magic of this time of year in a sustained, “ponder-these-things-in-your-heart” pace.

To keep the fasting spirit of Advent, we planned for these three, very tangible things:

1. Go to confession. Weekly? Twice before Christmas? Just once at some point in Advent? Whatever is the next step for you and your family, make that goal and mark it on the calendar.

2. Give up one “extra” in your life. For me, this year, I think it’s going to be creamer in my coffee. This is a great “type” of the “extra” I have in mind because firstly, I drink coffee everyday so it will be a daily sacrifice. And secondly, it’s an addition, an extra, to something rather than a thing on its own, so every time I drink coffee without the creamer, it’s a tangible penance. This is not the case with, say, giving up chocolate. That’s still a good penance, but unless you’re in the habit of eating chocolate every day at 3:00, there isn’t the same regular, mindful moment in which the chocolate is offered up in real time.

3. Fill the empty manger with hay. I got this idea somewhere online, so I can’t take credit, but essentially, for every act of self-denial or good deed, your kids (and you, so they follow your lead) get to lay a piece of straw in the manger. So every morning when I don’t use creamer, I put a piece of straw in the manger. Every time Ollie gets a burp cloth for George, he puts a piece of straw in . The idea is that by making sacrifices and loving one another, you are making a more comfortable, home-y place on earth for Jesus to be welcomed into.

A Sample Calendar of Celebrations (2020 Dates):

November 26 - Thanksgiving: The first day of Advent actually begins a whole new liturgical year. I love that Thanksgiving always comes just a few days before because we can really look at it as a day to reflect with on this past liturgical year and give thanks for all that God has done in it. For me, this takes Thanksgiving and gives it greater focus. What a lovely way to prepare to enter the Advent season.

November 27–28 - Friday and Saturday after Thanksgiving: Prepare the house for decorating. Everyone can pitch in to give it a good cleaning and bring up those red tubs from the basement. Go out and chop down a tree or bring out the fake one so it has time to fluff out before actually decorating on the first day of Advent.

November 29 - First Sunday of Advent: Decorate! Turn on your favorite Christmas album and deck the halls, decorate the tree, string up those lights, put out the nativity and, if possible, leave the manger empty, awaiting baby Jesus on Christmas morning.

All Sundays of Advent (Nov. 29, Dec. 6, Dec. 13, Dec. 20): At dinner time, Light the first candle on the Advent wreath, sing O Come, O Come Emmanuel, and tell part of the story of salvation:

• 1st Sunday: Adam and Eve in the garden.

• 2nd Sunday: Noah and the Ark

• 3rd Sunday: Abraham and the Israelite people

• 4th Sunday: King David

• These stories can be tailored to fit the age of your kids and should be very casual. Rather than getting caught up in the details of each of these important persons, stay in the realm of the general, over-arching story of salvation history, and the role they each played in preparing the world's people for Jesus. Don’t read from a sheet you printed off the internet. Tell them the story in your own words (supplemented with Scripture), and make it a conversation. Ask them to fill in key parts of the story they may already know. These are our ancestors we’re talking about, not some Bible lesson from a pastel-colored CCD book from the 80s, so get yourself in the mindset of telling an age-old family story and have fun with it.

December 6 - Saint Nicholas’s Feast Day

• Baking Day! Many of us have a yearly baking day with friends or family members. So that you can keep the fasting spirit of Advent, why not make sure you align your baking day with a feast? Then you can “taste test” as you go as much as you’d like! After all, it’s what St. Nick would want…

• Get out the stockings and hang them on everybody’s bedroom door handles. This is a variation on the “candy in the shoe” St. Nicholas tradition. That night, fill everyone’s stocking with a few simple pleasures: an orange, a bag of assorted baked goods we made earlier in the day, a handmade card. The next morning, stockings will be opened and then moved to their permanent spot downstairs, waiting to be filled by St. Nick Christmas morning.

  • As our kids get a little older and there are (hopefully) more of them, they’ll get to participate in filling the stockings. It will become a game of sneaking out of your room to put your gifts in each other’s stockings without getting caught. Kids will get to be creative each year deciding what simple thing to give. I’m envisioning a toddler giving acorns they picked up outside, a grade-schooler giving everyone a handmade paper snowflake for their bedroom window, a teenager using his hard-earned money to buy everyone their favorite piece of candy. Or, during baking day, each kid can make their own recipe and bag it to put in each other’s stockings later. This tradition gives kids from a small age the opportunity to be generous towards each other outside of Christmas morning which might include larger gifts that would easily overshadow the offerings of a little tike.

December 8 - Immaculate Conception:

• Go to Mass!

• Say a Rosary (or part of one if that’s all the family can manage)!

• At dinner time, light a candle in front of a picture or statue of Mary and talk about the gift she was to the world from the moment she was conceived in St. Anne’s womb. Again, keep this simple and from the heart.

December 12 - Our Lady of Guadalupe:

• Go to Mass!

• Say a Rosary (or part)!

• At dinner time, light that same candle in front of that same picture or statue of Mary, but also show the family an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe on your phone if you don’t have one in the house. Point out that she appears to be pregnant, and connect the story of the little girl whose conception you celebrated just four days ago, to the young woman who bore Christ into the world.

• Have Mexican food for dinner!

December 13 - Feast of St. Lucy:

• This will be a hard thing for me to do, but up until this day, December 13, do not turn on your Christmas lights. St. Lucy’s name means “light” and in towns across Europe, her feast day is celebrated with festivals of light.

• Right before sundown, make some hot cocoa, bundle up, and take the family outside or wherever your Christmas lights are concentrated (this could happen around the tree, just wherever will have the most dramatic effect when the switch is flipped).

• Have someone (one of the kids if they’re able) read John 1: 1-18. At verse 5, where it says: “the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it,” flip the switch, plug in the chord, and make those lights shine.

• Sing “Be Thou My Vision,” then pile in the car and go for a drive to admire the Christmas lights of all your neighbors.

(Again) December 13 - Third Sunday of Advent (Gaudate Sunday)

• The third Sunday is set aside in a special way to dedicate the day to joy.

• Have everyone prepare a joke to tell at the dinner table.

• Have a dance party!

December 20 - Fourth Sunday of Advent:

• Wrapping Day! For families with older children, this is the day for everyone to spend some time in their room wrapping their gifts to each other. Or for families with little ones, this is the day for parents to wrap and put those gifts under the tree.

• The benefit of setting this day aside is that the presents under the tree don’t become the focus of the entire season. Kids aren’t waiting for Christmas day just to be able to finally rip open that wrapping paper and see what’s inside. While presents are such an exciting part of Christmas, I think we’re all agreed they shouldn’t be the focus, so setting them out with just 5 days to go limits the space they take up in everyone’s minds.

  • To clarify, since everyone does something a little different, in my family the majority of gifts are from Mom and Dad, brother or sister, to one another. A few more are added Christmas Eve from St. Nick/Santa Claus.

December 24 - Christmas Eve:

• Go to a vigil Mass

• When you get home from Mass (or right before everyone goes to bed), gather around your nativity scene and reflect on the empty manger. Sing “O Holy Night,” then get everyone off to bed.

• After the little one’s are in bed, we’ll put Jesus in the hay, set the table for tomorrow’s breakfast, put the presents under the tree, and stuff the stockings.

• Someday, we would love to have a different set of decorations, or additional decorations, to add to the house Christmas Eve night so that when the kids wake up the next morning the house is transformed. Perhaps predominantly silver and white decorations are replaced with red and gold, or more lights are added to the house, or candles are lit. The idea is just that a real and thorough change is felt, like their surroundings coming alive, representing the change in the world when Christ entered it (“Long lay the world in sin and error pining ’til he appeared and the soul felt its worth”).

December 25 - Christmas Morning:

• First thing: check the nativity set for Jesus’s birth. Gather around and sing “Joy to the World” and whatever other Christmas favorites you have! “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” is totally on the table.

• Open stockings.

• Go to Mass.

• Get home and get back in your PJs. Absolutely.

• Have a hearty, lengthy breakfast.

• Open gifts.

• Spend time as a family, head out to extended family, do as you do please. You’ve got weeks ahead until the Christmas season is really over, so don’t feel like you’ve got to fit all the celebration in one day.

January 3rd - Epiphany Sunday:

• You can finally move your magi to the nativity set. They have arrived.

• Encourage your kids to give Jesus a specific gift just as the magi gave him gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Talk about how each of those men must have carefully picked what he wanted to present to the Son of God.

• Then go to your church so that everyone in your family can spend some time in prayer and adoration. While there, each person is encouraged to approach the altar on their own and silently make a gift of something specific about themselves or about their lives to God for the coming year—their performance in a sport, their math grade, their handwriting, their temper, their shyness. And you do it too. You don’t have to share as a family what you gave to God, though you can. It’s an excellent way to be with the Lord as a family, but at the same time give your kids the space to develop their own relationship with him, and see yours growing, too.

If this all seems a bit much…

If you’ve stuck around this long, wow, and thanks. This is my plan, young inexperienced mom that I am. It’s so attractive to me, and yet I know it will need tweaking and growing as we try it out over the years.

After first putting this all down on paper I looked back on my notes and, to be honest, my heart sunk. I thought about an Advent where all those baked goods would only be touched on 8 out of the 28 days. I considered the time constraints having littles often puts on your evenings. I imagined the hypothetical groaning and mutterings of teenagers who don't want to do this with me anymore. And I thought about abandoning the plan altogether. Not because I didn’t want to do it, but because the sneaking thought entered my mind that it wasn’t at all “realistic.”

And maybe it’s not. But I know that thought was a lie of the Enemy which means there’s something good here.

We're going to be exerting our energy some way this holiday season, so let's reflect and make sure we're spending it on the right things. If we do, I feel confident we'll end the year a little more settled, with a fuller heart and more peaceful soul.

I hope you found something in this barrage of ideas that sparked a little flame in you to “keep this time” with intentionality, reflection, and joy. With most gatherings out of the question this year, 2020 is definitely the time to try something new, right? If you try anything out, let me know how it goes!