Grumpiness during Advent
Christina Rossetti, A Victorian treatment of death, Advent Books, and a Spotify playlist
Every year, around mid-November, my kids and I begin a friendly war.
They see how much of a Christmas song they can play on my phone, sing or play on the piano before I mock-yell at them that they’re going to get in trouble if they play Christmas music too early.
Our house rule (loosely followed) is no Christmas music is allowed before we put up our tree the day after Thanksgiving. There have been years when I’ve actually tried to personally refrain from listening to any holiday music until Christmas Eve (unless it is specifically for Advent…see my playlist below).
When I’ve suggested we wait til closer to Christmas to sing carols at church, I think some people thought I was a bit of a grump. After all, we only have one time a year that we sing or play Christmas music. Can’t we just enjoy ourselves, enjoy the holiday merriment, enjoy the season?
This year, I’m feeling less insistent about waiting. I don’t know if I’m just tired of making the argument or just tired.
In her book on Victorian author Christina Rossetti, Rachel Mann reminds me that I might need to hold strong on some practices during Advent. On Day Two of Advent, Mann makes a connection between Rossetti’s poem “Dead before Death” and the practices of this season:
Our culture…has a troubling tendency to obsess over the ‘wonder’ of youth and vitality-without-end; it seems to have a terror of death, annihilation, and judgment.
She notes that, in this context, many modern readers might view Rossetti’s poem with lines like “All lost, all lost, the lapse that went before/So lost till death shut-to the opened door…So cold and lost for ever evermore” as morbid or “gloomy Victorian theology.”
A modern reader wouldn’t be wrong. The Victorians were weird as heck when it came to death. Developing understandings about the body and other sciences meant that they were more aware of how the body worked and how the dead body could be used to understand the living body (hence lots of dissection).
I recently saw this painting in the Philadelphia museum of art. Painted smack dab in the middle of the Victorian era, it is considered one of the greatest American paintings ever. Reflecting the British counterpart’s fascination with death and the body, it is a very large (and gruesome) painting of a doctor doing surgery in front of a crowd (and the patient’s mother).
The Victorian era was also the age of after-death photography, black clothes for mourning, and long periods of time away from social engagements when a loved one died.
With this in mind, why does Mann suggest that Advent should be a time to lean into to a more “‘Victorian’ treatment of death?”
I don’t think she’s suggesting we take up cadaver-photography or grave-robbing. We should be careful not to romanticize certain eras or approaches to death. After all the Victorians were in the unfortunate position of having a lot more knowledge about death and the body than their predecessors while, at the same time, not having enough knowledge to know how to stop epidemics like typhus and cholera.
But taking a look at the theology of people of faith during the Victorian era is an interesting practice. Especially when it comes to death. Writers like Christina Rossetti and George MacDonald (also a Victorian) experienced the tragedy of death and loss but they had no illusions, like we often do, that they could control it.1 This gives them a willingness to look at death more closely in the face and put it into a spiritual context.
Advent is the beginning of the year in the liturgical calendar…a sort of Christian New Years’. As with the secular approach to January 1 where we make lots of resolutions, Advent is a time to spiritually prepare our hearts for the coming year.
One of the ways we can do that is by looking at how we have experienced death in our lives, whether that is a big life change like a move or a divorce, a flood or a diagnosis, a failure or a disappointment…or an actual death.
The hope is coming, to be sure! A child has been born!
But to really appreciate that, to feel the true joy of Christmas, often means that we take time to recollect the heartaches too.
To contemplate death, both literal and metaphorical, is as much the work of Advent as looking forward to Christmas joy or the promise of the fullness of life in the kingdom.2
If you feel a little grumpy at this time of year, I get you. Maybe your body is just telling you to take a page from the Victorians (Heck, wear black until Christmas…that’ll start a conversation). Or maybe you’re just awake, noticing what Christmas has become in our consumeristic culture.
Sometimes our American way of Christmas can feel like the Capital city of Panem in the Hunger Games: all gloss, glitz, glitter, and glamour painted over to ignore and actively perpetuate poverty, violence, and death.
Advent is a time to remember that Jesus came not into a world of light but as the light of the world. Jesus came to rescue us because we needed rescuing from our materialism, our overconsumption, our violence, and our idolatry. Jesus came to heal the brokenhearted. And Jesus came so that death may die.
If you feel grumpy about the way we do Christmas in our culture, Advent is for you. Instead of jumping straight to the Nativity, wade a bit through the weird Advent passages about judgment and the Second Coming. Instead of singing “Joy to the World,” first sing a stanza of Savior of the Nations, Come.3
Instead of listening to “All I want for Christmas is you” ad nauseam until your ears bleed, save a little bit of the joy until Christmas Eve, then blast Mariah Carey. You might actually appreciate her extraordinary vocal gymnastics better if you haven’t been listening to it for two months straight.
Am I a grump? For sure. But am I right? You be the judge.
Advent Recommendations
Books:
Tsh Oxenreider’s Shadow and Light. We’ve used this book for years as a family and found it so helpful for short devotionals and adventures in new family traditions like St. Lucia Day.
As I mentioned earlier….Rachel Mann’s In the Bleak Midwinter: Advent and Christmas with Christina Rosetti. If you’re intrigued by the poetry of Christina Rossetti, you’ll love Mann’s reflections on her writing along with commentary on biblical narratives.
Sherah-Leigh Gerber and Gwen Lantz’s Comfort and Joy: Readings and Practices for Advent. Devotional meditations, poetry, spiritual practices and even recipes for the season.
Music:
Joy of Every Longing Heart by Sara Groves
Incarnation by Sister Sinjin
Awake Arise: A winter album by Lady Maisery and Jimmy
Advent Songs by The Porter’s Gate
Advent Collection by The Brilliance
Waiting Songs by Rain for Roots
I’ve made an Advent Spotify playlist with many of these songs on them (and more):
Other things not specifically about Advent:
This album is the exception I’ve always made to my own rule about Christmas music. Every year, this is the first album we begin playing as we put up our Christmas tree. Kate Rusby’s Sweet Bells.
I’m just going to say it. We’re fully on The Chosen bandwagon. Yes, I could nitpick some of the theological leaps and historical depictions about how the Gospels were actually written (Matthew carrying around a notebook to write down Jesus’ words annoys me every time) but I understand that creative license is sometimes necessary for the arc of the story. And I appreciate what Dallas Jenkins is trying to do. Season 4 has a few controversial moments but in Episode 4 (I won’t spoil it)…the olive press metaphor and Jesus’ pain was beautiful and effective.
My daughter and I could not stop laughing.
A little bit of death humor.
And finally: Gen Alpha Poet Laureate
My books:
Mystics and Misfits: Meeting God Through St. Francis and Other Unlikely Saints
Awakened By Death: Life-Giving Lessons from the Mystics
For more on the Victorians, death, and George MacDonald, see my book Awakened By Death. :)
Page 9, In the bleak midwinter by Rachel Mann.