Today we celebrate the first Sunday of Advent 2020.

In a year where few things have been normal, the arrival of Advent offers a reassuring manifestation of normalcy and comfort. For those who celebrate Christmas within a liturgical framework, Advent is significant. The Western Christian Church (Catholic and Protestant denominations), in fact, observes Advent as the beginning of the Church Year—the first celebration in a year-long cycle of liturgical seasons.

The principal impression many people carry about Advent’s First Sunday comes from walking into a church and seeing a large wreath, graced by four candles. This wreath sits on a special stand, rests on a table, or is suspended somehow. Three of the four candles generally have the same purplish color, while the fourth is rose-colored. A white candle to be lit Christmas Eve or Day may already be placed in the middle. Simple, timeless, powerful.

This year many cannot enter their churches to celebrate the first Sunday of Advent. The purple of the Advent candles, altar cloths, and pastoral stoles will shine solely in their memories or within images on a screen. Masked staff members will replace congregants who ordinarily, at the end of Advent’s Fourth Sunday service, join together in a jolly, all-hands-on-deck spirit to drag in the Christmas tree, string the lights, drape the altar in white, gold, or silver, rim the doorways with garland, and fill the window sills with holly and poinsettias—all in anticipation of Christmas Eve. In some locales, Christmas Eve services themselves will be restricted or canceled.

This is bad news in a year characterized by bad news. Still, the beauteous truth about Advent is a simple one: the liturgical cycle happens, whether or not we know about or participate in it. The Advent wreath will be lighted by someone, candle by candle; services for Advent and Christmas will be held, whether marked by a sole pastor, broadcast on line, or attended by a quota of parishioners separated into zones by cords or masking-tape.

Here is another beauteous fact: Advent, by virtue of its own quiet nature, cannot be quelled by outwardly imposed restrictions. The visible symbols of Advent flourish in the home: an Advent wreath on the dining-room table, constructed in any manner the family chooses, small touches of purple décor, and booklets of devotional poems, songs, and prayers placed nearby. The same online world that threatens to replace real life with flat images also brings us ready access to seasonal readings, hymns, and crafty ideas to enhance our Advent celebrations.

And we can keep an Advent calendar—one that, this year ought to have twenty-six slots rather than the cookie-cutter twenty-four offered by commercial Advent calendars. Yes, it is news to many that Advent lasts a variable number of days, and not just twenty-four. The twenty-four day notion was schooled in me when my mother brought home a glittery, 24-windowed oblong calendar when I was about ten. Wonder of wonders, I’d never seen anything like it. And while such glittery calendars surely were common in Europe, I suspect they were new to the shops of Roanoke, Virginia. With a smidgeon of chocolate behind each flap, that calendar led me to conclude that Advent apparently was some kind of newly created venture, the whole purpose of which was to learn 24 short Bible verses in order to be rewarded by 24 tiny sweets.

Actually, my childhood sense of Advent isn’t too far off from what many in our secular world think, especially if you gaze at the piles of trendy calendars that have sprouted recently, sans Bible verses. I bet you can leave your house right now and, within hours, buy several of these newfangled “Advent calendars,” most extravagantly packaged to contain 24 products like chocolate tabs, perfumes, cosmetics, jewelry, cool tools for dad, gourmet cheeses, fishing gear, or risqué ladies’ undergarments. It is almost laughable how enthusiastically these calendars have expanded to fill a retail niche few realized was there.

There is, though, one positive aspect of such calendars: they have raised the popular awareness of Advent’s existence, albeit in a bizarre way. Have you overheard anyone looking at such a product and asking a friend, “Okay, so what is Advent anyway?” I have. But the gulf between such glitzy contraptions and the spiritual importance of an Advent season cannot be closed by unwrapping 24 products, no matter what they are.

In many of our past ten Advent calendars here at Professor Carol, we have marked the four Sundays of Advent with a simple explanation of their symbolism and ceremonies for lighting the Advent wreath. In fact, you may wish to refer to a prior entry for the First Sunday in Advent here. On that day in 2016, neither I nor you could have imagined the uproar facing us this year. In the rearview mirror, Advent and Christmas 2016 seem idyllic, do they not?

But of course, they were not idyllic. No matter what their joys—and I hope there were many for your family—they brought forth their own challenges, as does every season of life. What is different now, though, is our painful awareness of society’s increasing fragility, with almost every virtue, value, and convention we took for granted now threatened.

Mark this First Sunday in Advent in whatever sincere and enthusiastic way you can.  We need Advent very much this year. Like spiritual provisions we are offered, it awaits us with more promise than we expect.