Living Liturgically

Kate Dawson has been married to David for 17 years, and they have 10 beautiful children. She resides in Thibodaux where she and her family are members of St. Thomas Aquinas Parish. She serves on the local leadership team for Magnificat Women’s Ministry, and she and David are responsible for bringing the Domestic Church movement for married couples from Poland to the U.S. Kate and David speak nationally on marriage, where she’s able to share the good news of God’s faithfulness and mercy.

The journey of how I’ve come to celebrate Advent is best understood in three phases: the Christmas free-for-all phase that began the day after Thanksgiving during my early twenties, the white knuckling phase of not celebrating anything in reaction to the first phase, and then learning to embrace what it means to truly embrace Advent in preparation for Christmas.

One fateful evening in graduate school, when a group of friends and I were headed out, I turned the radio dial to the “All Christmas until Christmas” station. A friend in the car asked me in response, “Why are we listening to Christmas music? It’s not Christmas yet.”  Telling me to turn off *NSYNC’s “Merry Christmas, Happy Holiday” felt like blasphemy at the time, but it wasn’t a hill I was ready to die on, so I changed it.

But something happened that night. I started thinking more intentionally about how I wanted to prepare for Christmas. I decided to replace secular Christmas songs with actual Christian hymns. That’s when I noticed a shift happening in me as the lyrics became more Christ-centered. My heart began to shift too, which reminded me of the words from the famous Christmas hymn, Joy to the World: “let every heart prepare Him room.”

A few years later, the second “white knuckling” phase of my journey started. As my kids got a little older, they were forming their own opinions about Christmas, so they started asking my husband and I some hard questions. This made us think about the specific traditions we wanted to observe in our family. For example, when should we put up the Christmas tree and start decorating?

Since the beginning of our marriage, we may have overreacted to the trend to not decorate too early for Christmas. We started white knuckling our way through Advent by not celebrating Christmas until Christmas Eve. That meant we usually brought home the “Charlie Brown Christmas tree” each year since it was the only option left in the lot (at least there was a discount!).  I felt like I was making the better choice – unlike the rest of the pagan world – as if the only options were to start celebrating Christmas after Thanksgiving dishes went in the sink or fold my arms and humbug my way through Advent until Christmas Eve. Thankfully, God was so merciful and gentle with us.

At one point, a priest friend told us that his family’s tradition was to wait until “Gaudete Sunday” to start decorating for Christmas. At first, I thought it sounded like cheating, but Gaudete Sunday (“Rejoice Sunday”), which is the third Sunday of Advent, is a common day for Catholics to start decorating for Christmas. The thought of finally having a traditional day for decorating, and one that I didn’t come up with on my own, was very attractive to me, so we eventually adopted the same tradition.

My heart still struggled with what we should do between Black Friday to Gaudete Sunday because Christmas is everywhere. My children would beg us to decorate and the only explanation I could give them was, “because it’s not Christmas yet.”

As our children grew, white-knuckling the pressure not to decorate started to feel overwhelming. By Christmas Eve, my only reward was a big sigh that I didn’t have to hold out anymore. My husband and I started to see that our family was missing out on the gift of Advent, but we had an opportunity to change course. We were living for the first time in a place where neither of us had family nearby, which meant that we didn’t feel as obligated to the particular traditions that either of us grew up with. While his family did some Scripture reflection as a family around the Advent wreath, my family, though faithful and devout, did little more than light the candles each Sunday.

The Lord saw our questions and our desire for something more. He put it on my husband’s heart for us to stop watching TV after putting the kids to bed as a sort of penance for the season. It was hard at first, but it gave us a chance to fill this new void with something else. We really enjoyed the chance to relax without TV after their 8 PM bedtime. That time helped us reengage with each other, and after a few years of doing that, we noticed it was creating this space of deeper preparation for Christmas.

Over the last several years, we’ve taken even more steps to embrace Advent instead of merely using it as the reason to avoid decorating too early for Christmas. We’re learning that God is a God of “yes” even if He says “no” at first. When he says no, it’s because He wants to open a place in our hearts for a yes.

I’ve come to appreciate the opportunity to reflect and have the space to “let all things be brought to the light” during Advent. By saying no to little comforts, or letting go of control in different areas, it creates spaces of “yes” for God to come in and reclaim space in my heart for me to delight in Him, and rejoice in the gift of His presence.

Our family prayer also shifted.  We decided to take a break from doing examinations of conscience (at least, for the kids old enough to talk!), and started gathering around our Advent Wreath instead to reflect on the day’s Gospel reading. Each child who can read (and sometimes the one who thinks she can) takes turns, and we all have a chance to share what stands out to us and what we think God is saying to us through it. Comical? Yes. Like herding cats? Most definitely. But many times, it’s quite profound, and my husband and I get to witness the growing hearts of our children and what God is doing in them.

These days, we ease ourselves into Advent and then Christmas season with small, tangible sacrifices, and a little more silence and prayer. For example, this year I plan to have no sweets during the week, to stay off my phone while feeding our newborn, and to read an Advent prayer and reflection journal by someone who’s inspired me over the years. We also receive the sacrament of confession as a preparation for Christmas, which we like to do before we sit down and start all the Christmas festivities, like decorating and listening to Christmas music.

When Gaudete Sunday comes, the kids look forward to dad pulling the tree out of the attic (yes, the attic; this is not the place to argue for real or artificial trees), listening to Christmas music (even the *NSYNC versions when my husband is at work.) And come Christmas Eve, the house is ready (save the chaos of gift wrapping in my closet), and through God’s abundant mercy, our hearts are ready, too.
 
Kate Dawson
 
 "Be not afraid of Christ. He takes nothing and gives everything."
 - Pope Benedict XIV