What is Advent?
Advent is a season of candlelight, reflection, and expectation. For believers, Advent represents a multi-faceted period during which to prepare for the birth of Christ, celebrate faith in and conversion to Christianity, and anticipate the eventual resurrection of the son of God. Christians traditionally pray, sing, and light an additional candle on each Advent Sunday until all of the candles are lit on the fourth Sunday. A fifth, white candle known as the Christ candle sometimes sits unlit in the center of the wreath; it is only lit on Christmas Eve.
It is the 14th day of Advent which started on the night of the 28th of November this year. It gets dark soon. It is pretty miserable most days: gloomy and damp or freezing cold and crispy. The sun hardly shines and feels as if it is dark most of the time. In central Europe where I am stationed at the moment, we cannot complain. In Alaska or northern Sweden, sun does not even rise for months. It is a miserable time and I am not surprised that most of us cannot wait for the Winter Solstice to arrive on the 21st of December bringing more day light with it.
Last year I bought tons of ‘plastic’ candles that run on battery. I keep them on all day and night to give myself a positive boost of ‘light’. This year I am realizing that there is not much I can do about either the weather or the darkness. All I can do is spend my time with enjoyable and fun things to lift my mood.
Yesterday I shared about a Hallmark film – Let it snow – that lists different fun traditions around Christmas time. As I was watching the film I realized that all we need is to have fun. We are attached to gloom and doom. We recycle our human drama daily in the shape of wars, epidemics, personal misfortunes, and more. Instead we could just have fun.
The drama will never cease! We, humans, are tragedy generators – read Romeo and Juliet? – so it is simply unavoidable to have some kind of disaster going on in our lives all the time. So, the best we can do is to have fun nevertheless. As opposed to crying over our misfortunes all the time, we could defy our fate and find things that lifts our spirit and make us smile.
I am going to make some fun ART today! 🙂 A funny snail maybe! 🙂
What is my tip for today?
