It’s not even mid-winter, and it’s already been bleak

I’m not what you’d call a church-goer. My attendance at structured worship services is spotty, with all due respect to spots. When I go, I go out of respect for family, but, when it comes to Sundays, I’m something of a sybarite.

Well, let’s be honest, it’s a sybaritic tendency heavily tinged with Calvinism. Luxury, for me, is lazing on the couch with a cup of coffee and CBS Sunday Morning.  I have what you might call a wealth of experience with the institutional church, so, even though I abstain from services, the church year is imprinted in my marrow.

As a result, in late November, my perspective imperceptibly turns toward Advent. We enter the darkest time of the year, and this year, in the hinterlands of northwest Iowa, it’s been a difficult start to winter. We haven’t seen this much snow for several years, and it’s a shock to the system.

We chafe against it. It’s hard enough that it’s dark at five o’clock, but someone just cleared the snow and now there’s more to shovel. Plus, it was really cold for a few days. The dog couldn’t even put all fours on the ground during bathroom time. It’s hard to “do business” when he’s switching feet back and forth.

And Christmas is looming.

Not everyone greets this news with joy. Remember too: Advent is also the beginning of the church year. The Church spends four weeks anticipating Christmas and this may be the one thing that the larger culture shares with the Church during December, even though their end goals differ wildly.

There can be something delicious in the preparation and anticipation; there can also be something dreadful in the expectation and fatigue.

Judging by the Walmart aisles, Christmas is the season that commercially revs into being in October, about two days before Halloween. Consumer culture devotes two months to Christmas whereas the church calendar gives it a mere 12 days.

Those 12 days were historically meant for feasting and a suspension from the rigors of labor. Some workplaces, including my own, shut down between Christmas and New Year’s, but it’s a school; it’s expected. What would life be like if everyone got a paid week off? Could business owners live with the lost revenue? Could we survive if we run out of Cool Whip?

I see small signs, here and there, of people thinking that maybe they’ve had enough piling so much stuff under the tree. I’ll be forever grateful to my daughter and daughter-in-law asking to discontinue adult gift-giving some years ago. Since that happened, December no longer feels so oppressive. Thanks, girls, women, ladies, you two!

Even so, some challenges remain. Living in the upper reaches of the Northern Hemisphere — cold and dark and snowy — it’s enough to make one wish they lived in Australia or Uruguay. To live through Advent and December in sunshine and warmth would seem terribly wrong, but to borrow a phrase from an old song, “I don’t wanna be right.”

At least the Gregorian calendar has the good graces to begin the new year after seasonal winter has started. By Jan. 1, the days are slowly getting longer, but the Church heads into its new year hurtling headlong into the darkest of days and says, “Sit. Be quiet. Wait. Mourn. Hope.”

This is not fun, but fun is not the point. Christmas is for fun; Advent is for reflection, and struggle can lead into wisdom. We usually learn more from hardship than from ease, not that we ever rejoice about enduring difficulty. Maybe it’s my Calvinism showing, but I sort of expect bumps in the road. I don’t do well with it, but I expect it. This isn’t heaven after all, it’s Iowa.

I’ve seen Advent wisdom in people I admire, people who’ve suffered, people who’ve borne sorrow, but who are not dour. They have come through a dark and hard time to a quiet strength, and, yes, perhaps joy in the end.

Joy in the end, that’s my Advent wish for you.

Joan Zwagerman wrote this column just as the cold snap was ending. This past week, with temperatures in the 30s, has been a glorious reprieve.