We traditionally think of Advent; the preparation period for Christmas, as beginning either on 1st December when we open the first door of our Advent calendar or, if we are churchly minded, on the fourth Sunday before Christmas, which this year will be on 29th November; also the beginning of the church year. But there is an older, and perhaps wilder, Advent which was marked from at least the 5th Century when Saint Perpetuus, then Bishop of Tours, directed his monks to fast three times a week from Martinmas, St Martin’s Feast Day on 11th November until Christmas Day.
Martinmas is the most wonderful festival, marked by lantern-lit processions and remembering 4th Century St Martin of Tours, a Roman soldier who laid down his sword to follow the Prince of Peace and tore his cloak in half one bitterly cold night to share it with a poor man. This is particularly significant as a Roman soldier’s cloak, the hooded paenula or unhooded sagum, doubled as the soldier’s bedroll, being both warm and waterproof. That St Martin shared his cloak with another lessened his own chances of survival in a harsh climate but also had a deeper meaning. The sagum was worn in deliberate contrast to the toga, which was considered to be a garment only of peace time. Even those in the cities who were uninvolved in fighting would wear the sagum in times of war and so it was a symbolic act indeed to tear it in half. That St Martin’s Feast Day now falls on Remembrance Day here in the British Isles and throughout the colonised Commonwealth seems the most powerful of synchronicities, especially when we are entering a time which we hope will call in Peace on Earth.
Before our time was colonised in the name of Capitalism and productivity so many more of our days were given over to the sacred and so it was with Advent and Christmastide, which once continued until Candlemas on 2nd February. There is a beautiful rhythm in this as it means that both Advent and the Christmas season last for forty days, mirroring the forty days of Lent and Eastertide. Indeed, Advent was once known as ‘St Martin’s Lent’. It also means that, once, Christmas and all that goes with it lasted for almost three months! We must reflect of course on the ways in which the institutional Church has also colonised the time of the Common people, but it does feel that there is much to be reclaimed by once more carving out a conscious space for the holy and hallowed to come in.
And what better time for sinking into the holy than the middle of November, when the last of the leaves have fallen from the trees, taking the warmth of their autumn colours with them, and we are contemplating our journey through the long days of winter dark? We know that we will be called to rest, that we may be stripped to the bone. Why would we not want to be accompanied by the Spirit that will lead us back into the light when the time comes?
It’s not known with any credibility when the marking of Advent first began; almost as though it grew up from the mycelial threads of the soil or fell from the stars, but it has called us to seek ways to sit in the in-between of the thin places for many hundreds of years, just as the even older earth-based faiths did before it and continue to do. This makes so much sense as at Advent we are sitting in vigil awaiting the incarnation of Divinity on Earth, an incarnation that will come with the birth of the Son and rebirth of the Sun at Midwinter. Christianity is a faith so deeply woven into the mess and muddle, and magnificence, of matter that of course it is rooted in these deeper tides.
And so it is that with this older Advent we are seeking a wilder God; one that chooses to be born yearly within the rhythm of the seasons as a vulnerable baby, a child of a displaced refugee family without the safety of a place of belonging. A Divinity needing our care, our protection, and our fierce love. We are all pregnant with peace and suffused with wonder. In these weeks of vigil we too are invited to consider what we wish to bring to birth as we wait for the Star to light the winter dark. With the world as it is we are so desperately in need of hope and the feeling that we can make a difference.
And in 2020 we are journeying too with the Covid-19 pandemic, which has caused this to be the most uncertain of years. We are all ‘Advent people’, learning how to live well in the in-between places, or doing our best to learn. It is telling that many amongst us have already decorated our homes for Christmas, seeking to create the feelings of ‘comfort and joy’ that the season brings ~ a raft in turbulent seas. That so many have no other access to comfort than decorating for Christmas (in the absence of the yearly escape of a holiday) is telling but we are all nevertheless planting seeds in the fertile darkness of holy ground.
And so to Old Advent, more usually known as Celtic Advent, which again has several possible start dates, most usually now beginning on the evening of 14th November with 15th November as its first day, but sometimes beginning on the 16th, or on the Sunday closest to Martinmas! This is all rather unsettling but gives us space to choose the date which suits us best and to explore what resonates with us most. There is a wildness and a breaking of boundaries in that alone. I choose to begin my own Advent on the 14th/15th. As I did last year, I hope to share a blog for each day of Advent, and continue into the 12 Days of Christmas (and possibly Candlemas if the world turns in that way). It would be lovely to have your company in the journey.
The term ‘Advent’ is taken from the Latin, ‘adventus’, for ‘coming’ or ‘arrival’. In his poem ‘Little Gidding’, T.S. Eliot writes;
“We shall not cease from exploration,
And at the end of our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
May this winter vigil see us arriving together on new, more beautiful, and ever more holy ground, knowing it as if for the first time.
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advent
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Martin's_Day
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_of_Tours
https://www.romanobritain.org/8-military/mil_soldiers_cloak_.php
