Advent Season

Every December in this space I talk about how our society has upended the tradition of this month being the season of Advent - a time of preparation for Christmas - and the Christmas season, which is from Christmas Eve through Epiphany. We have turned Advent into Christmas and the period after Christmas into a dull time of taking down decorations and the gloom of winter.
I will spare you further rantings on this besides my usual urging of taking Advent seriously as a time of getting ready for Christmas and then really celebrate Christmas during the appointed time - I guarantee you will enjoy the holiday much more this way.

Below is an Advent and Christmas related poem by the great author and poet Thomas Hardy. The inspiration for it is from Isaiah 1:3, which says “The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master’s crib; but Israel does not know, my people do not understand. "We see a depiction of this verse in the traditional Orthodox Nativity icon (look to the left when you enter the narthex of our church and you will see it).

The Oxen

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
“Now they are all on their knees,”
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
“Come; see the oxen kneel,

“In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,”
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.