Advent Nights

Advent is a dark season. Here in New England, the sun sets at four in the afternoon. It’s fully dark before five. The early mornings are dark, the evenings are dark, and throughout the day, the sun hangs low in the southern sky. I feel the short hours of the day each Advent – waiting for the balance to shift back towards increasing light. Most of my daily tasks are clustered into those few, daylight hours. When the sun sets, I want to curl up and watch the candle flames flicker. Despite 12 years living in candlelight, without electricity, the winter always slows me down.

But looking back at people who grew up with short days and long, dark nights – people who lived seasonally all of their lives – and I’m continually overwhelmed by the fullness of their winter days. Right now, I’m reading Dostoyevsky’s Letters to Myself, and Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell aloud to my children. The former is full of references to late nights out on the winter streets of Russia; in the latter, someone is forever reading or writing late at night, with tea things set out well after sunset. Clarke’s novel was written in the 21st century, but her historical environment is more or less accurate. Dostoyevsky is, of course, a genius, but he’s not alone on the Moscow streets or in the lamplit Moscow clubs. How does one keep doing all the daily things in darkness? How do we stay awake into the night?

Tiny Flames in a Dark World

I think that, in many ways, it’s a process of going back in our minds. We have to relearn to expect night to be dark. We have to reacquaint ourselves with darkness itself. In our modern world, there are lights everywhere. No matter how dark the night, our houses can be bright as day. The city streets glow with streetlights, passing cars, and glowing signs.

Out here in the woods, my little house glows with candlelight against a dark, dark night. The candles warm the darkness, and push it back a little bit, but they’re small, living lights that can easily be snuffed out. In many ways, the old-fashioned, candlelit house in winter feels like a little image of the Christian in the world today – learning to be warm and cozy while the darkness presses in on all sides.

Our world often feels every bit as dark as a winter’s night, doesn’t it? But for many of us, the past few centuries of cultural Christendom have given us a chance to think less about being “a light to the world.” It’s not easy to see a candle flame in the bright sunlight of a summer’s afternoon, nor is it easy to see that flame in the bright lights of a modern home. The light doesn’t stand out like it can in the true dark of a winter’s night. The Gospel imagery of a lamp lit, then placed up high as a guiding light is hard to grasp fully in a world of bright lights. But I know that my little, solar lantern – hung on the woodshed can guide me home from the far end of the road we live on.

In a world of distractions, bright lights, and flashing images, we sometimes forget just how important it is to embrace nighttime: darkness and quiet. Advent is that perfect season to become “acquainted with the night” – to not merely move from one type of distraction to another, but to “[stand] still and stop the sound of feet,” as Frost wrote in his poem “Acquainted with the Night”. To learn quietness from the gentle Son of God.

Acquainted with the Nights

The more media presses in on us, the more we realize the value of Silence. But Silence and Darkness go together – the early night is full of sounds, but as it goes on, all of them recede and we’re left with the cold stars and the rustle of wind in the trees. It can be overwhelming – to sit under the moon in silence and let the darkness seep in. But it’s restful too. Gregory of Nyssa once wrote that Moses “entered into the darkness and saw God there.”

In the pre-solstice nights – awaiting the birth of Christ, we too can encounter God in the darkness. But not if we hide from it behind bright screens and flashing images. Not if we continually fill the silence with chatter. Often we’re encouraged to just change what we consume in Advent, as far as noise and images are concerned. But switching out one mass-marketed consumable for another will never help us actually meet Christ. Turning from one TV show to another, Christian, show, or turning the radio from the local classical station to Catholic Radio aren’t choices toward peace and beauty. They’re not inherently uplifting changes; more often than not, they’re moves from the interesting or beautiful toward the banal and repetitive. When the season changes, we’ll jump back to our old entertainments with relief, having never learned to appreciate life without them.

Instead of changing bright and loud consumables for other, ostensibly Catholic, bright and loud consumables, Advent calls us to darkness and silence. To non-consuming. It’s a fasting season – a season in which we await the Birth of Christ, who is Himself curled up in the warm Darkness of His Mother’s womb. He is “one acquainted with the night.” Advent, and the months of Christ’s Infancy that follow allow us to acquaint ourselves with it as well. He is inviting us to “[outwalk] the furthest city lights…down the saddest city lane.” To be alone with the hidden Christ Child and get to know Him, one on one.