Advent

My parents raised me as a Roman Catholic. Although I still think of myself as one, I don't go to church anymore, but I'm hoping to go at least for all the weekends in December up until Christmas. My parents brought me every Saturday night to Mass, and going to church during the Christmas season was the absolute best time of year there.

Advent is a season in the church's holy calendar, and according to Wikipedia, comes from the Latin word adventus, which means "coming". Advent is the period where we wait, knowing Jesus is coming, but not when. One of my favorite songs to play during the Christmas season is not a Christmas carol, but an advent carol, "O Come O Come, Emmanuel".

O come, O come, Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

The song is beautiful, and really shows how the human spirit thirsted before Jesus came. It's mournful, but deep and touching.

Also one of the things I loved were the things that changed about the church that I could see- specifically, the Advent wreath. It's a wreath with 4 candles placed in it, 3 purple, which stand for the 3 weeks before Christmas, and the pink candle, that signals that Christmas has come.

And finally, I also loved that my church would put up trees with "ornaments", that listed a boy or girl, their age, and what they wanted most for Christmas. My parents would let me run to the tree the first night it was available, and read the tags, trying to find some we could take. It's sad, back then I was only a kid, and I wanted girls who asked for Barbies and My Little Ponies, rather than the kids who asked for hats and mittens. I thought those were "boring", and probably just didn't understand why they'd need to ask for those things at Christmas instead of TOYS. (My parents always took one or two of those as well, though, as well as my choice).

Just to let you all know, I played Mary once in the church pageant, lol. I wanted to be Mary, but it felt so wrong since I was so BLOND. I wore blue robes, and a white veil that refused to stay bobby-pinned to my head, so when Mass was over, I took it off immediately. Although NOT funny at the time, my dad saw me come out without my veil and started yelling at me in church to get the damn thing back on my head, he was going to take pictures!!, and me being all of maybe 7 started tearing up, lol. We tease my dad about that so bad now, him yelling at the Virgin Mary in church and making her cry- certainly didn't help his pictures come out too well! :-D