Advent is where it all started for me. Of course, like most British children, I adored Christmas growing up, albeit not for anything to do with Jesus. Becoming a Christian definitely gave a new dimension to Christmas for me, but it was discovering Advent that really got me thinking about the liturgical year as a resource for my own spirituality.

It wasn’t what I had expected. I’d always assumed that Advent was just the countdown to Christmas. That, after all, was what the Advent calendars of my childhood had been for – working out how many days were left until Christmas (well, to be truthful, initially until my birthday, but after that Christmas). The Advent devotionals you can buy from many Christian booksellers are, for the most part, reflections on the Christmas story, or perhaps the incarnation as a theological theme. They’re there to get you ready for Christmas.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with reading devotionals on the Christmas story in the run up to Christmas. The very last thing I want this blog to be is a series of snooty ‘you’re doing it all wrong’ posts. But traditionally, while reflecting on Jesus’ first coming has been a feature of Advent, it’s not actually where the emphasis has been laid. Traditionally, Advent is a season for getting ready, not so much to welcome Christmas, but to welcome the return of Jesus.

It would be difficult to say which is my favourite season in the liturgical calendar, but you could make a good case for Advent. It has an austere, majestic, sobering, thrilling beauty to it. Even a moment’s reflection on the awesome implications of the day of the Lord should set our hair on end. All the petty preoccupations of our daily lives pale in the light of the cosmic drama that we unwittingly inhabit. The crises and calamities which convulse the world stage are both relativised and imbued with new meaning as the birth pangs of a new age soon to begin. The coming judgement fills our every choice with eternal consequence. You and I and everyone who has ever lived will have to give an account.

Advent, however, is not a season of terror, but of hope. It’s brilliantly captured in the classic Advent carol Lo He Comes with Clouds Descending. The Day of the Lord is spine chilling. ‘Every eye shall now behold him, robed in dreadful majesty’. There is deep wailing for those who reject Christ. But the one in clouds descending was ‘once for favoured sinners slain’. Advent is about ‘our blessed hope, the appearing of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ.’ (Titus 2:13) For Christians the Day of the Lord is the day that every sorrow is healed, every longing fulfilled, every wrong put right. Advent’s prayer is ‘Maranatha!’ ‘Our Lord, Come!’ As another Wesley classic puts it ‘dear desire of every nation, joy of every longing heart’. It is that awe and longing that gives Advent its special fascination for me.

Advent begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas, and with Christmas on a Sunday this year, it’s as long as it gets. I can’t wait to share with you some of the resources that have helped me understand and observe Advent, some of the traditions we’ve developed to make it our own, and some of the things I love about this season.