i miss

[piranha]

having an advent calendar. with the little doors, and surprise images behind them. (alternatively, with the little doors and xmas-themed chocolate pieces behind them :).

how odd. or maybe not. when i was a child believing in god and jesus, the anticipation before christmas was the very best thing. the advent wreath with its candles, one for each week, the smell of the pine resin mingling with candlewax and smoke -- it fills me with nostalgia to see one now, though it doesn't seem to be as wide-spread a tradition over here. it would feel weird to get one myself now that i no longer believe, but i still miss it. well, at least i can still bake special cookies!

more snow! it's colder now, and if this continues, it might yet become that snowfall i look forward to. and i am drinking rooibos tea with agave syrup, and lavender from the garden (matociquala gave me the idea, and it's yummy).

Comments

[kightp.livejournal.com]

A few years back a clever friend made herself a Solstice calendar along the Advent calendar model - wee doors that opened to reveal surprises. I've thought since then it would be fun to devise something similar, but I never remember until it's too far into the holidays to *do* it.

I adore the trappings of the season, whatever they may be. Having lost the faith of my childhood, I decided I didn't want to lose the joy, so I opted to celebrate *everything.* There will be evergreens on my mantel, and bayberry candles and stockings, and if the spirit strikes me I may even stop by midnight Mass on Christmas Eve.

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

it's good that you can do that.

i have very complicated feelings about christianity, and can't just take some of the trappings and continue to use them. the symbolism is quite engrained, and it feels like i would be committing a disrespectful act by putting up, frex, an advent wreath -- i am most definitely not anticipating christ's birthday, and the candles no longer mean what they are supposed to mean.

it's just too difficult to disentangle. and christmas mass; *shudder*. never, ever again. it would be so very wrong. i feel very much out of place in any church, at any time. too bad; i love to sing, and oddly enough singing hymn doesn't feel wrong (probably because i ignore lyrics as a matter of course). singing the messiah would be glorious. but not in a church.

i can do evergreens and candles, and i do. but those trappings are not all there was to the feelings, and i miss the whole thing.

*laugh*. previewing -- i see livejournal has just this very moment changed its banner for the holidays.

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

I actually think you might like this one (http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/customs/Xmas/calendar/) for a lot of the reasons I do:

(a) It's online, so you don't have to buy one
(b) It tells about how different cultures celebrate xmas
(c) It spells Christmas "xmas"

:-)

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

Oh, but watch out -- there's obnoxious music.

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

yes. yes, there was.

but that's a cool idea, talking about different holiday customs. i like it. thanks!

it's not so good at replacing the nostalgic one; online isn't able to do that for me, i want to touch it. besides, the online one doesn't let one cheat!

[erik]

I have two different Lego advent calendars.
Each day a door with a different little Lego kit, and every week or two the kit has instructions to make something bigger with all the kits so far...

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

OMG. that is so cool.

[erik]

I don't know if they do one every year or not; I know that the two I have are from two consecutive years and the next year (last year) they made one but I was too late to get one. I didn't get around to checking for one this year.

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

they did one for this year!

[dr-brat.livejournal.com]

WhooooHOOOOOO! I just ordered one. That's too cool. Thanks for the idea.

*bounce*

[rahaeli.livejournal.com]

We're doing an aggressively pluralist one over at irchurch :)

Advent Calendars

[klwalton.livejournal.com]

Oh, hell, I'd better run to TJ's some time tomorrow and pick some up for the kids. The ones with the chocolates behind the doors. They've been getting those since Danny was wee. I'm surprised they haven't mentioned it, but I haven't seen any of them for a couple of days, so they really haven't had the chance :).

[(Anonymous)]

I don't seem to actually need the advent calendars, but I still have the advent wreath, sort of (not enough conifers around), and I certainly still go for the cookie baking and decoration making.

The difference between us is probably that I never believed. It was never about Christianity in my family. It's a pagan bringing-light-to-the-darkness and reconnecting with family and friends festival. Transposing that to early summer is what's been tricky.

I'm now so split-minded that for me a "real" Christmas should be dark and cold but a "real" New Year's should involve a pool, and watermelon. I don't think I'll ever manage both :-).

[eub.livejournal.com]

I had and loved advent calendars as a kid, although we weren't Christian. The calendar I remember was of a dim blue snowed-in forest; its doors peeked at small woodland creatures celebrating, and spilled light out onto the snow. Quite possibly there was Christian symbolism in there, but I didn't get it.

[leiacat.livejournal.com]

I miss having a tree. I have many memories of going through the old boxes of decorations and picking out exactly the right one for exactly the right spot, or curling up on a couch next to it with the room lights turned off and only the tree lighting up the room, or the pine smell that persisted for days, the beauty and magic of it all.

Of course, after moving to the US, the trees have irrevocably become intermeshed with the notion of Christmas, and that's just too foreign a concept to allow. Each year I ponder putting up a tree on the 26th just to have it over New Year's, but it's too much trouble (especially since I'd have to buy one early), and I'd have to pre-buy quite a few ornaments. So, I never do. I help friends decorate theirs, but somehow, the magic isn't quite the same.

[lizw.livejournal.com]

Over here, the chocolate manufacturers spotted that their market for advent calendars was limited and started making generic "holiday calendars" that count down from 1 December to New Year's Eve. They first appeared for Y2K, but were evidently popular enough to survive beyond that.

[submarine-bells.livejournal.com]

I miss the kind of advent calendars that didn't have chocolate in but instead were covered with silver glitter and had christmas scenes on and cute little mini-pictures (usually of xmas-related characters or critters, IIRC) behind the doors.

My local supermarket has the sort with chocolate in; and bizarrely enough, football-themed advent calendars. Presumably those have pics of the grinning mugs of footie players behind the little doors.

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

yeah, i miss that kind a lot more than the chocolate kind; i just remember the chocolate kind as being an extra treat at the time. i had a glitter one with xmas-themed mini-pics for years, and i don't recall ever getting tired of re-opening the windows.

i feel tempted to make one, except for the pictures i'd use small scherenscnnitte (what the heck is that in english -- there's a word i haven't used in more than 30 years, *heh*) -- paper cutouts, i guess, and glue jeweltone-coloured transparent paper behind. come to think of it, i've never seen that sort of paper here either, and we used it a lot as kids, to make luminaries. hey, i could make an advent calendar in the shape of a lantern, and use it as a luminary. i like that, i think.

but definitely with the silver glitter!