Down For The Count: Advent-O-Rama!
Or, the December print zine and a lot of different ways to light candles.
Why do we like counting the days in December, at the deepest valley of the winter solstice, quite so much?
I had a conversation with a friend last week, mostly related to how businesses in Maine—a highly seasonal place—operate. She said, ‘I guess in summer you have money and in winter you have time.’ Time! Money! The same thing? The opposite thing? Is counting the days of December the temporal equivalent of swimming in Scrooge McDuck’s pool? The original Scrooge, after all, begins his journey counting money—travels alllll over time—then counts blessings instead.
It’s a theory, anyway.
Whatever it is, it’s December and we are counting. At the very end of the month we will count backwards and out loud until we start over again at 1/1, but until then many of us are counting up to 25 using some sort of Advent mechanism.1 (Also, many are counting from 1 to 8, including the other half of my household, in case it’s getting too Hail The Newborn King for you.)
Long before I became officially Waldorf-pilled (more below), I maintained an advent calendar for my sons consisting of a new experience-based, Christmas-related project or adventure each day. I know, it sounds intense. And, it is. But, it’s also intensely fun and it helps you to get to all the things throughout the month that you want to do, but then suddenly it’s the 26th and you haven’t done any of them.
For instance, one day is: Hang lights. Another is: Go see the display at the botanical garden. Depending on ages: Ride the Christmas train. Donate a toy; give to the food pantry. You get the idea. Sometimes it’s a project—potato stamp Kraft paper for wrapping presents!—some days, it’s something that’s already happening—performance at school!
Until now, I have kept this particular corner of my particular brain to myself, but today, and because I’m also sort of exploring the boundaries of my zine medium, I am putting out a little advent calendar and some of my advent-experience ideas. The zine-calendar is spruced up to be more general for people who aren’t living in either Maine or Los Angeles (which is where my real and personal lists were created) and less kid-centralized. Rhythm and ritual are fun for adults too!
The idea is that you can separate the pages, cut up the little squares (yes, feel free to cut this one up!) and assign one thing to each day. You will have noticed, by now, since it’s December 10th, I carry a pretty hearty philosophy of Better Late Than Never. I hope you have fun with it!
And if it’s too much (it isn’t too much, it’s just right), there are a couple of other time-counting mechanisms I’ve come across, below. Incidentally, they also reflect the return-of-light, candle-burning feeling that all of these Solstic
e celebrations—Christmas, Hanukkah, Diwali, Kwanzaa, and more!—have in common.
Candles!
The idea with these is that you light it each night. Depending on which you go for, you either light it just to the next number or you burn one candle per night.
Advent Circle
The Advent circle or wreath is, apparently, a pretty Catholic affair, but in Waldorf schools, each candle—lit each week leading up to Christmas—represents a different part of the natural world. There are also sort of (unintentionally) spooky verses that go along with each one. My favorite is for the first light of advent, minerals:
The first light of Advent is the light of stones,
Light that lives in crystals, seashells, and bones.
☠!!
Advent Spiral
At our school, they call it the Winter Spiral in an attempt to [further] wriggle out of the Euro-Christianity of it all, but essentially this is a spiral of pine boughs with places to put a candle dotted along. In silence, each person walks the spiral and places a candle along the path, a symbol of light in the darkness and the accumulative light we get when we are in community. (Cute.)
What did I miss? Any advent or otherwise traditions we should include here? If you’ve got one, leave a comment (see aforementioned: “community”)!
…even if, as in my case, you didn’t grow up with religion and this is really a pretty pagan affair after all!
I love this! I used to do a similar thing with my kids (ADVENTure calendar) until it got too overwhelming. I'm an introvert and having something to do every single day for nearly a month made me batty by Solstice. Maybe I can handle starting on Dec 10th though :)
A few of the things we did were: give the kids money to shop for food and fill a Little Free Pantry, pick up litter on a walk, candlelight bath, attend a local craft fair, make candles, bake cookies and take them to a friend. So much fun! Makes me wonder why I don't think of doing this sort of thing at other times of the year...