Bring back that Advent Hush

At its best Advent is a time of expectation rather than a mad rush around. Before things got all too commerciliased my childhood Advents in Devon were exciting times when there was a lull before the festivities of Christmas. When Christmas came it was not just a celebration of one day but a whole 12 days. I was genuinely sad when Epiphany, 6 January, passed.

Now Advent seems chronologically constipated with endless activity. By Christmas Day many of us are glad its all over and are very fed up with the endless pressures it brings. Advent in Britain used to feel like a warm but brooding darkness pentrated by a growing light. Now it feels more a mad drive in the pouring rain with intermintant oncoming headlights blinding the road ahead. Advent has become a migraine and a casualty in the war of supermarkets.

Did you know that supermarkets daze us with unnatural light so as to confuse our sense of time. Outside light is blocked so that we forget what time it is. If for example we knew how late it was then we may hurry rather than stay for more shopping. Designers of these modern day tenmples do not want us to see the darkness outside. And yet I find I want the Advent gloom to blanket me so that I am ready afresh for, to paraphrase the Benedictus, the light which shines through the shadow of death.

The words of the US author, Minnie Louise Haskins (1875-1957), capture it so well. It was famously used by George VI in his Christmas broadcast, 1939, And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: 'Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown'. And he replied: 'Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.'