THE
LONGING OF ADVENT
by
Mary J. Breen
When I was four—so
my mother told me—I entertained the parishioners at St. Teresa’s Christmas
concert with a rendition of Santa Claus
is Coming to Town, complete with Shirley Temple I’m-too-cute-for-words
finger-wagging. Even at four I’d already grasped why You better watch out. I knew that Christmas was about arrivals: the
coming of the Baby Jesus, and the coming of Santa Claus, and the coming of
presents.
My father was a
devout Catholic, and for him, the four weeks before December 25th were The Longing
of Advent—a time of spiritual preparation, a time of yearning for the coming
Savior and the rewards of the next world. My mother’s preparations, however,
were much more of this world. Like all the mothers I knew, she shopped and she
decorated and she baked. She made Christmas cakes—light and dark—and Christmas
fudge—maple cream and chocolate—and sugar cookies cut into the shapes of
half-moons, stars, and bells, and then coated in thick white topped with
sprinkles and tiny hard silver balls. They looked wonderful but they were hard
as rocks.
Our principal
Christmas decorations were the over 200 Christmas cards we received every year
and which my mother hung on strings stretching from one side of the living room
ceiling to the other. She also taped cards to the back of the panes of our
solitary French door. Those cards with religious themes—The Star of Bethlehem,
The Holy Family, radiant angels and humble shepherds—got first billing; winter
scenes, Santas, and cartoon reindeers got the back rows. In a doorway, she
thumb-tacked what I thought was an amazing red paper honeycomb bell that folded
flat when not in use and which my tall parents bumped into every time they
passed through. We had no wreath for the door, and no Christmas-themed candles,
glasses, or plates; just the “good dishes” and the “good silver” that were
taken from their newspaper wrappings only at Christmas and Easter. We had no
Christmas tea towels or napkins, but we did have a white crinkly plastic
tablecloth emblazoned with large red flowers that my mother said were
poinsettias. None of us had seen a real poinsettia then, nor real holly or mistletoe,
but we knew there was something magical about mistletoe since mischievous or
dastardly suitors in cartoons were forever clutching sprigs of it as they
pursued frightened maidens.
We also had a tiny
winter village, and by the time I was eight or nine, I was allowed to set it up
on the kitchen table beside the salt and pepper. My mother would give me a
mirror the size of a dinner plate for the frozen pond, and some cotton batting
for snow, and I would arrange the little white plastic church, the little white
plastic shops and houses, and the tiny snow-topped evergreens around the pond.
However, much as I tried, they never stayed put on their snowy hills and they
were forever tipping over, especially during meals. On the pond was an
oversized red Santa with a loaded sleigh and reindeers, the front pair already
in flight. Our Santa had only six, not eight, reindeers, but if I looked down
at their reflection in the pond, then there were twelve. I was very proud of
our village as it seemed to me to be exactly the kind I’d seen at the beginning
of TV shows of the day, those tranquil little towns in the distance being
dusted with fake falling snow.
Everyone I knew
had a real Christmas tree, usually a sweet-smelling fir. Because of the
required solemnity of Advent, our Christmas tree could be set up but not
decorated until Christmas Eve. My father would hammer two crossed pieces of
kindling into the bottom of the trunk to give it a bigger base, but this never
worked very well, and, like my little plastic trees, it often toppled too,
shattering balls and lights, and making my parents a little testy with each
other.
My mother bought
and wrapped and mailed off all the presents. Except for those from Santa—Here comes Santa Claus!—which didn’t
arrive until Christmas morning, they were all in full view under the tree
alongside the parcels that friends and relations had sent. Although she didn’t
forbid my shaking or poking or sniffing the gifts, I had to proceed very
carefully so as not to knock over the wobbly tree, nor make it appear that I
had in any way actually peeked. And that wasn’t easy as wrapping paper back
then was thin and flimsy, and no matter how many stickers people used in those
dark days before Scotch tape, the paper often tore away in chunks.
Apart from a
cardboard star with silver pebbledash on one side, ours was a completely
secular tree with the standard decorations of the day. We had no perching
elves, no perching birds, no perching angels, and no precious ornaments made by
precious children. We just had a string of large coloured lights that all went
out if one bulb failed, and large, very fragile red glass balls—not the new
pink ones that look like 3-D anatomy lessons. We also had my mother’s thick
cookies hung from loops of red wool; peppermint candy canes that, with their
crooks broken off, made tasty drinking straws; fuzzy velvet candy canes that
looked like large red and white pipe cleaners; a rope of scratchy silver tinsel
that looked like a giant caterpillar, and tinsel icicles. My mother was usually
fed up with the whole task by this point, so she would just throw the tangled
icicles on in clumps and be done with it.
My parents had
not, of course, taken the Christ out of Christmas. The music cabinet beside the
tree was the designated spot for our cardboard cut-out crèche, a two-foot-wide
diorama that my parents called The Crib. They got it when they were married in
1938, and I still have it, now greatly battered. The stable and a huge yellow
star beaming down on its roof are the only three-dimensional parts. The figures
that fit into (and fall out of) little cardboard slots in the foreground are
flat, and so are the background boards that show the Little Town of Bethlehem, some small cypresses, and two distant
mountains. Inside the stable are a flat donkey and cow, and closer to us, a
flat Mary, Joseph, and Baby Jesus in his manger, no crib for a bed, not swaddled, but calmly sitting in the prickly
straw wearing the brightest halo of them all. Come and behold Him. In the grass on the left are slots for the
adoring, flat, ragtag shepherds and their flat sheep and goat; on the right are
slots for more sheep and the three flat Wise Kings and their flat camels.
On Christmas Eve,
I was allowed to set up The Crib—everything except the Three Wise Kings. They
had by far the best outfits, and the whole scene looked lopsided and empty
without them, but the rule was that they (and their well-dressed camels) could
not arrive until January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany. My parents called it Little
Christmas, and they considered it a very special day as it commemorated the
first introduction of the Messiah to us, the Gentiles. So, in our house, the
Three Wise Kings stayed in their box until the Twelfth Day of Christmas, giving
them at most three days in the light before they were packed away for another
year.
As the date when Santa Claus is coming to town
approached, I spent a lot of time wondering what gifts I might get, longing for
the new dolls and doll carriages, the games and toys from Eaton’s catalogue
that I’d asked for and which I hoped Santa had heard about when he was making his list and checking it twice. While
I was counting down the days to that Silent
Night, Holy Night, my father was busy adding Advent prayers to the many
prayers we already said together every evening. My focus, he would remind me,
should be gratitude for the wondrous arrival of the little Lord Jesus; however, as we prayed, right there in front of
me in full view under the tree was a growing pile of presents. Much as I tried
to think about this coming new and
glorious morn, the longing I felt was entirely for the pleasure of getting
at those packages. I’m sure this was evident to my father, as he would quietly
remind me that when he was young, he and his sisters and brothers were happy to
receive their Christmas gift of one orange each. His words made me uneasy, but
they didn’t make me long for a simpler time nor did they make me indifferent to
what was awaiting me under the tree.
I think my good
father actually believed he could outsmart the forces of consumerism, and turn
my attention to the proper reason for Joy
to the World. He didn’t scold me, but I knew he didn’t like seeing me more
enthusiastic about the arrival of my new six-gun and holster, my new beaded
jewellery kit, my new bubbly bath salts, and my new baby doll than for the
arrival of the newborn King who came
on that silent night, while shepherds
watched their flocks and angels bent near
the earth to touch their harps of gold. He wanted just one thing: for every heart—especially mine—to prepare Him room, but I was still young
and still governed by the very ordinary, worldly interests of a little kid who
loved presents.
* * * * *
Mary J. Breen is the
author of two books about women's health. Her fiction and nonfiction have
appeared in national newspapers, essay collections, travel magazines, health
journals, and literary magazines including Brick, The Christian Science
Monitor, Boston Literary Magazine, The National Post, and JAMA
Cardiology. She was a regular contributor to The Toast. She
lives in Peterborough Ontario Canada where, among other things, she teaches
writing.
