Thursday, December 06, 2007

The Eye of the Storm

This is the first week of Advent. It's my favourite season - contemplative, peaceful, warm, happy. There's a lot of hope about it, and an undercurrent of sadness...after all, Easter is only a few months away.

In the weeks leading up to the Nativity, I tend to fall into a rhythm of mental preparation. There's a certain schedule that needs to be kept in order to fit everything in. One doesn't want to get to December 23 and realize she hasn't made the cookies she's had every year since she was a toddler, or hasn't yet watched her roster of required holiday viewing.

Most important of all, one doesn't want to realize she hasn't given herself time. It can be hard to find at this time of year, with frantically excited children, long lists showing little progress, and "holy-crap-I-need-to-do-8-to-10-repeats-per-day". But I need time to be alone, to be at peace, to reflect on my history.

I'd like to take the blog along on my Advent journey. It won't be too involved - I haven't had a great deal of time lately to post, so I'll be putting up things like a cookie recipe every week, and maybe a poem or two. One thing I'd like to do in the next year is structure the blog a bit more, so that certain things will happen on certain days. I think this is a nice way to start.
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By the way - notice it's St. Nicholas' Day? Megan, you must be so proud of me.

8 comments:

clumsy ox said...

Happy St. Nick's Day, by the way. The kids were excited to wake up to their shoes filled with chocolate coins and oranges. It didn't quite offset the loss of Peanut, but it helped.

I'm enjoying Advent for the first time this year. I wonder why we never really did it before?

Stace' said...

Ox, you weren't ALLOWED!!!

Tabatha said...

Happy St Nicholas Day!

A good friend of mine says St Basil did more for orphans and the underprivileged than St Nicholas BUT St Nicholas did punch Arius so how could you not love a Saint who did that?

Poor St Nicholas, he is up in Heaven wishing that that story never got circulated. :)

Jo said...

One of these years I am going to have all my Christmas preparations done before December even begins so I can enjoy Christmas like I did when I was a child. I don't have any big knitted gifts planned this year, so at least that pressure is off me. I would love to get some baking done, however.

Happy St. Nicholas' Day!

Gwen said...

We've only ever given a nod to Advent in the form of the Advent wreath... and I'm not even sure if that has any authenticity at all. I'm woefully ignorant about the whole shebang.

A [very secular] friend's child was looking at the nativity scene and asked if he could play with the three Wild Men -- so I'm thinking ignorance is all relative, right? :D

Kate said...

We're going on a journey? What should I pack?! I'm so excited! Will there be travel packs? Do I need fancy clothes? I love going on journeys.

Shan said...

Kate I find you cheeky.

Tabatha - ha ha!!

Gwen - "Wild Men", I love it.

Ox - I was annoyed with myself that I didn't do the shoe thing for my kids. Definitely next year. I think I'll do St Lucia though - since we have an ancestral right to celebrate it.

Kate said...

Cheeky? Moi? Jeepers I've never been called that before. Can I still go on the journey?

OK, I'll stop now. Must be something in the cold air :)