ad•vent (noun)
the arrival of a notable person, thing, or event
Similar: arrival, appearance, emergence
the first season of the Christian church year, leading up to Christmas and including the four preceding Sundays: Advent
Today is the first day of Advent 2022. Two unrelated things reminded me: the arrival on my doorstep this week of a friend with a Christmas cactus (Already in bloom! Doesn’t it know it’s not Christmas yet?), and the arrival in my inbox this morning of the first of my daily Advent emails from the G.K. Chesterton Society.

Even from an early age I think I understood Lent as being some sort of preparation for Easter. By contrast, I don’t remember Advent being presented/explained/promoted as a season of preparation for Christmas. Christmas just came. Didn’t it?
Maybe I missed that lesson, because for sure we followed the church liturgical calendar. On the first Sunday of Advent we started singing Christmas hymns (In November! Weird!), and the church sanctuary added some Christmas ornamentation. (Not too much!) Unlike the soaring and elaborate Roman Catholic cathedrals of Europe, our United Church buildings on the Prairies were more in the visually austere Lutheran tradition, minus the genius architecture.
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