Tredje søndag i advent
What is Christmas all about? I'm not religious, so is it then just a stress-infested tribute to consumerism that we might just as well do without? Far from it, I think.
One day last week I was walking through the city centre in the evening. All the Christmas decorations were up by then, all the many lights - in the trees lining the streets, on the facades and suspended over our heads between buildings. It struck me then as it does ever year, how December is one of the darkest winter months, and how much difference the holiday decorations make to how I experience the dark.
That's the meaning of Christmas right there for me. It's about being reminded that there is something out there that's bigger than my everyday troubles. It's about knowing that there's light in the world even though it feels like I hardly see the sun and about remembering hope and peace when the stress and worry threaten to overwhelm me.
-- This could easily turn into a post in its own right rather than an introduction to what I wanted to post to mark the third Advent Sunday, so I'll leave things here with a quote from the tv-series Babylon 5 that sums it all up. And the fact that the quote is unrelated to Christmas should serve as a reminder that it's outside of the holidays that it really matters to remember these things.
'There is a greater darkness than the one we fight. It is the darkness of the soul that has lost its way. The war we fight is not against powers and principalities, it is against chaos and despair. Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope, the death of dreams. Against this peril we can never surrender. (...)'
(My emphasis; quote is taken from here.)
One day last week I was walking through the city centre in the evening. All the Christmas decorations were up by then, all the many lights - in the trees lining the streets, on the facades and suspended over our heads between buildings. It struck me then as it does ever year, how December is one of the darkest winter months, and how much difference the holiday decorations make to how I experience the dark.
That's the meaning of Christmas right there for me. It's about being reminded that there is something out there that's bigger than my everyday troubles. It's about knowing that there's light in the world even though it feels like I hardly see the sun and about remembering hope and peace when the stress and worry threaten to overwhelm me.
-- This could easily turn into a post in its own right rather than an introduction to what I wanted to post to mark the third Advent Sunday, so I'll leave things here with a quote from the tv-series Babylon 5 that sums it all up. And the fact that the quote is unrelated to Christmas should serve as a reminder that it's outside of the holidays that it really matters to remember these things.
'There is a greater darkness than the one we fight. It is the darkness of the soul that has lost its way. The war we fight is not against powers and principalities, it is against chaos and despair. Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope, the death of dreams. Against this peril we can never surrender. (...)'
(My emphasis; quote is taken from here.)