Advent -1

Technically, it isn’t Advent yet. Technically, Advent begins at Evening Prayer on the Eve of the First Sunday of Advent and ends before Evening Prayer on Christmas Eve. Because Christmas Day is a fixed date – 25th December – and therefore falls on a different day of the week from year to year, the First of the Four Sundays of Advent wanders between 27th November (as it was last year) and 3rd December (as it is this year). So technically, Advent this year begins tomorrow evening…

…But the vagaries of the Liturgical Calendar don’t fit with manageable packaging! So Advent Calendars standardise the season, from the 1st to the 24th of December.


I intend to blog an Advent Calendar, beginning today at -1. Because creating packaging is helpful in seeking to communicate what we believe about God; but in standardising the package for the sake of our convenience,
in smoothing out the element of disruption,
in regularising the irregularity,
we run the risk of missing something important at the very heart of what we are trying to communicate in the first place…


Advent