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Sometimes memories can be happy and sad at the same time.  I’m thinking about my mom, who passed away three years ago in November––which means that my family is coming up on our third Christmas without her. 

The holidays are different now, in big and small ways.  The largest difference, of course, is missing my mother’s presence, whether her warmth, her laughter, and even the particular ways in which she’d get agitated over the course of a sardined-together, days’ long family Christmas.

And the smaller ways.  This may sound selfish, but I miss the presents she would buy for me.  They weren’t ever anything extravagant, mostly just everyday clothes to wear.  But in a way that only moms can pull off, whatever she got me connoted both charm and sweetness but also a certain tangy, passive-aggressive quality because she very obviously would get target sartorial items that were designed to replace whatever she disliked from my usual repertoire of frippery.  If during a particular year she didn’t like my shirts, my mom would get me shirts for Christmas; if she thought my socks were too ratty, I’d receive socks; if she suspected that my pants were becoming too tight, I’d come to possess slacks with room; if she couldn’t stand my old bathrobe, I’d find a bathrobe under the tree; etc.  This practice would occasionally annoy me, but it was a couple years ago that I finally threw away the last bit of clothing she had ever selected for me: an old sweater that was more holes than knits.  I cried.

And then there were the home decorations, the wassails, the cookies and sweetmeats, the Christmas ham, and all of the innumerable other holiday touches that you only fully notice once they’re gone.  My dad will do his best this month to approximate the sorts of seasonal accouterments that my mom pulled off so gracefully, but although we’ll deeply appreciate those efforts, it won’t be the same.

Yes, Advent is a season of hope, peace, love, and joy, but it’s also one of loss.  Every Christmas, we’ll track diminutions and absences, but please know that Advent likewise has a place for noting such declension.  After all, light contemplates darkness.  And if Advent is the beginning of the church’s liturgical year, it’s not the end.  As we move through successive liturgical seasons from here, we’ll come to Ash Wednesday, to Lent––more darkness––and then to the pitch black of Good Friday.

Nevertheless, Advent ultimately correlates with Easter, where we discover once and for all that darkness and loss don’t have the last word.  As we confess every Sunday at Liberti Collingswood, we remember the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.  

Don’t be afraid to allow darkness into your Advent, but don’t let it win––because in Christ, darkness loses.

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