ARTICLE - Advent For Non-Theists

It may appear strange for a Buddhist, or anyone whose spiritual affiliations are roughly in the camp of non-theism, to be buying advent related stuff. Advent is, after all, traditionally a significant Christian period anticipating the birth of God's son, is it not? It could, however, be reasonably asserted that advent, like the event it leads up to - Christmas - has decade after decade become primarily marketed as a secular consumer activity. Every year more and more really expensive luxurious advent calendars feature not just twenty four days of chocolates, from the merely chocolate flavoured to the high end chocolatier, but now you can have them with various over priced teas, coffees, jams, cosmetics, jewellery etc, you name it, there is seemingly an advent calendar for it. It's commercial range constantly expands.

Each year, during this period when Jesus is said to have been born, a Christian is encouraged to reflect on the meaning of the arrival of Jesus on earth, the significance of waiting, to maintain hope of salvation. Advent encourages you to reflect on three particular things - to revere what happened in the the past  - how the meaning of that event reverberates to the present day -  envisaging a future when Jesus will return in the glory of a second coming. And advent has been a period for such reflection for millenia. Instead of a period of self-indulgence, advent was once a time for the practice of reflection and fasting. So how did we arrive here at an advent season so predicated on Dionysian excess and Bacchus like indulgences?

As a Christian ritual, the season of advent has no specifically Biblical origin. As with many things now considered the epitome of Christmas, including its placing in the aftermath of the Winter Solstice, the rituals of advent have been adapted from paganism. What we now refer to as the Advent Wreath, came originally from a Scandinavian pagan practice utilising multiple candles and a wreath to pray for light and warmth throughout the coming Winter. In 1829 a German Lutheran pastor adapted that tradition, placing twenty four small red candles and four larger white ones on a cartwheel to mark out the approach of Christmas. Using this day by day step method to teach children about the stories and meaning of the nativity. This subsequently was stripped back to four candles lit on the Sundays before Christmas, representing hope, peace, joy and love, and the final central one marking the birth of Jesus, is lit on Christmas Day itself. This idea spread, and German emigres brought the tradition to the United States.

The tradition of the Advent Calendar, with twenty four doors opened up each day before Christmas Day, telling the nativity story, followed a similar 19th century German Lutheran invention, that then crossed the sea to America. Advent calendars became really big business after World War Two, When confectioners started publishing them in conjunction with their sweet selection boxes as part of their Christmas marketing. Today's advent calendars of twenty four doors with sweets behind them, began to emerge in this post war period, as the advent calendar and the confectionary box collection morphed into one entity.

If you are Non-Theist you could skip over the 20th century consumerism, unless you are a dedicated chocolate fiend. Avoid the Christian accretions of the 19th Century. Reach back to advent's origins in a Scandinavian pagan wreath practice with its multiple array of candles. Christianity in Europe very astutely chose the bleakest period of the year in which to place advent, so you would journey with hope towards the illuminating arrival of the son of God. You are simultaneously waiting on and marking the approaching weeks before the Winter Solstice, after which the days slowly begin to grow longer and the arrival of Spring lies at the end of it. There is always something shining brightly beyond advent, somewhere you need to cultivate faith in moving towards.

A state of advent, of sitting silently waiting in expectation, is the essence of the season. Some significant turn around event in our lives and awareness lies at the end of it, this is common to many traditions, whether theist or non-theist. We can all discover something about ourselves in this spiritual Winterreise, where the bleakness of the weather and the barren skeletal landscape, can result in a need for our faith and hope to be enriched. The perspectives and vistas of our life within Winter can feel literally more restricted and cramped. That people suffer from SAD in the Winter, is a clinical description of an extreme state, for what is a general existential human experience. Its a recognised phenomena that there is an increase in older people dying over the Winterval period, as they let go of the idea of seeing in another year of existence. 

We all find Winter difficult to some degree, as no doubt did our ancestors. What helped them, and may help us too, is when we are right in the very nub of it, to partake in a ritual involving candle light, to conjure up hope of future brightness when the Sun will begin to ascend and stay for longer.  An advent wreath marks out points on that cyclical journey. Advent could also be seen as this necessary seasonal retreat, a place where you look inwards. As the sun and moon continue to cycle through their orbits. To reexamine the transits of your own life cycle over the past year - how have you been? how are you now? What hopes have you for the year yet to come? Reflect on the transience of everything, whilst watching an advent candle burn. Consider a candle as analogous to our own spirit, with its limited burn time. Consider how fortunate you will be as the nights draw in, if you also live to see them draw out again. Each moment of every day bringing the advent of something that is entirely new.