Advent Calendar / 1 December

When I went to the 1st Advent celebration in the town square on Saturday, some firemen were handing out advent calendars. Do you have them in your Christmas traditions?

The first printed Advent calendar is said to have been produced in Hamburg in 1902 or 1903. In 1908, Gerhard Lang, a printer in the firm Reichhold & Lang of Munich, made 24 little colored pictures that could be affixed to a piece of cardboard. Several years later, he introduced a calendar with 24 little doors instead. The practice disappeared during World War II, but was taken up again after the war by Richard Sellmer of Stuttgart, and from there got spread worldwide. Beginning on the first day of December, one door is opened each day, counting the days remaining until Christmas Eve.

  

The first door on my calendar today was found on the door, and underneath it was a Christmas wreath (on the door)…

There was also something written on the back. It said: “Make a drawing with the text ‘Don’t forget to put out the candles’ and put that on your door.”

Not a bad idea actually… I did not do a drawing, but I used a photo:

Feel free to print it out and put it up on your door if you like.

In the Scandinavian countries, we also get a special Christmas calendar show on TV every day in December. The first one was aired in 1960, I think that was the year we got our first TV (I was 5 years old). Some more memorable than others. Some were really good and fun for the whole family to watch. Others were really bad.

Anyway… I’m sitting here thinking right now that perhaps I should have my own Advent calendar here on the Blog this December…?

Let the first Revelation be that I still enjoy Advent calendars, even though I’m 55 years old and have no children or grandchildren to blame it on!

Quotation of the Week (48/2010)

If the world is cold, make it your business to build fires.
~ Horace Traubel ~

Snow, Wind, Fire and Definitions

If the photo seems familiar, you may have seen it before in a post entitled Fire and Ice back in December 2009, about a Christmas Market and the making of an ice sculpture.

Today, I'm looking out of my windows at a snowstorm outside, and feeling lucky that this happens to be a day when I don't have to go out. (Traffic warnings have been given, around here defined as a No 1 warning, on a scale of 1-3, with 3 as the worst.)

My thoughts, however, are circling more around some recently read posts at other people's blogs.

Yesterday evening, I was reading a post at {Simply}Heather's Blog, entitled Furious or Cleansing Winds. I have to confess: I don't always find Heather's thoughts all that "simple". Sometimes they raise protests within me, while at the same time I partly agree, which can be very confusing. (That is not meant as criticism. The best writers are often the thought-provoking ones.) Sometimes, like yesterday, I find myself wondering whether 20 years or so ago, at another stage of my life, my reactions would have been the same, or different. I keep turning thoughts like that over, and don't always really reach a conclusion. I am the same, yet different; because my life has changed a lot since then. (What is it they say? Every cell in the human body is replaced and renewed within a period of seven years...)

Part of Heather's post had to do with the word "religious" used as a label. I get her meaning, and yet when I look back through my own life, I find that I no longer react quite the same way to that word as I used to. I quote my comment:

Words are tricky sometimes.

When I was younger, I think I had that same definition of 'religious'. And if someone asked me if I was religious, I would automatically say: No, but I am a Christian.

Today, I think I would say: 'Define religious!' before I accept or reject the epithet.

Because the primary definition of the word is simply: "having or showing belief in and reverence for God or a deity" (Free Online Dictionary) or "relating to or manifesting faithful devotion to an acknowledged ultimate reality or deity" (Merriam-Webster).

I would still want to add that not just any deity will do for me. But the word in itself (religious), for some reason, has become a lot more neutral to me. I'm not sure why. Possibly just because I have had more time to think about defintions...

It might also have something to do with the fact that these days, most of the rules and restrictions that I find myself forced to follow are set by my own body.

Anyway: Then, this morning, I read a post by Don at Musings and Misc. Thoughts, entitled I've Been Burned. No attempt to sum it up would do it justice so I really recommend taking the time to read it in full. But it has to do with getting burned by life, but at the same time learning the difference between "consuming" vs "refining" fire. Which in turn led my thoughts back to Heather's title - "Furious or Cleansing Winds".

The Bible is full of thought-provoking contrasts like that. However much you try, you can never quite pin God down and define him. You just end up first with Himself teasingly defining Himself as "I am who I am" (Exodus 3:14); and then, in the New Testament, his Son nailed to the cross, and put in a sealed and guarded tomb - and still breaking loose! You might say, not only did Jesus refuse to obey the rules, he also refused to be defined as dead...