It’s beginning to look a lot like Advent, everywhere you go…
All I want for Advent is my two front teeth…
Advent is a coming, the goose is getting fat…
On the first day of Advent my true love gave to me…
No doubt you’re already being deluged with Christmas songs everywhere you go. Radio stations, shopping malls, TV commercials, and even friends humming them around the office. It seems like every year Christmas gets a little more diluted by moving up a few days. By the time we actually celebrate the birth of Our Lord, we are all sick of it.
When I was a kid, Advent was a big thing. Each day my sister and I would argue over who got to open the next door on the Advent calendar. This was solved by my mother with an ingenious even/odd day system.
Likewise, there was the lighting of the Advent wreath candles and there we each got a week. Being the youngest, I always got the first week, which was awesome, even if I only got to light one candle.
But when I grew up, those things sort of fell by the wayside. Advent became just a time to fight traffic and crowds, and see gaudy Christmas displays and hear the same half dozen secularized “Christmas” songs everywhere.
When I started rediscovering my Catholic faith, I found out there was a whole season I was missing! A season after Thanksgiving and before Christmas, that is not actually Christmas. A season we have skipped over in the mad rush to commercialize that most holy blessed day of winter, Christmas.
Advent!
Now I try to put off celebrating Christmas until Christmas. Yes, I still do my shopping (though much of it is done online) and get Christmas cards out. But I keep Advent as Advent.
We take turns lighting the Advent wreath and saying the prayers. We open our Advent calendar doors.
And most importantly I turn off the radio and turn on my iPod. Instead of hearing “Holly Jolly Christmas” and “Winter Wonderland” a hundred times a day, I listen to some of the beautiful specific to Advent.
I’d like to share some Advent albums with you. I’ve included links to the Amazon MP3 store, but you can find these on CD or iTunes or other places as well.
- Advent at Ephesus by the Bendictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles, has 16 beautifully sung songs appropriate for Advent. My favorite is “O Come Divine Messiah.”
- His Love Remains by Colin Raye has some awesome music on it. My favorites include “O Lord I am not Worthy” and “Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence.”
- Hymns by Beth Nielson Chapman is another of my favorite Advent albums. Her rendition of “O Sanctissima” gives me chills.
- Anno Domini by Koiné has more modern arrangements. Check out “O Savior Rend the Heavens Wide” and “Of the Father’s Love Begotten”.
- Miss the 1960s? Check out A Season of Hope: Rediscovering Our Advent Heritage by Brotherhood of Hope.
- Shout the Glad Tidings by the Singers – Minnesota Choral Artists is another good one. “People Look East” is a very Christmas-y sounding Advent song.
There’s plenty more where that came from, but I hope this inspires you to play some Advent music and keep Christmas until, well, Christmas.
Copyright © 2012, Michael Lindner
Michael Lindner
Mike is a scouter, a science geek, a dad, a husband and a Catholic. He earns a living as a software engineer in beautiful New Jersey. In his spare time (ha ha) he muses at his blog What Does Mike Think? He is not a writer (which will be painfully obvious after reading his posts) but feels called to apologetics and evangelization anyway. You have been warned.
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