Melanie McDonagh: If we bypass Advent we'll be over Christmas way before its time

Festive cheer: The Black Friday madness has moved online for Cyber Monday

Ray Tang/Rex

1 December 2014

You’d never think it, what with Black Friday having come and gone, but it’s only now that we’re really in Christmas mode. That’s because yesterday was the start of Advent, the month of preparation for Christmas, when churches light the first candles on their advent wreaths. In Germany, Advent — not Christmas — markets are under way.

It’s not a season that has much resonance in Britain, where we’ve been listening to Christmas carols in the shops for a fortnight, the festive lights were switched on in the middle of November and, 10 days ago, Santa arrived at the grottos and fairs. Ditto the fairies. At the Christmas at Kew [Gardens] winter display last week, the ice fairy in the grotto tried hard to get children to make letter shapes — M-A-G-I-C (“because that’s what Christmas is about!!”) — and drum their little feet to conjure up the magic. It was a tiny bit dispiriting as only commercial festivities can be.

The thing is, we’ve got the feel of the season wrong. The month before Christmas is meant to be about expectation, hopefulness, preparedness, not full-on celebration. My children’s school had an Advent service without a single Christmas carol — O Come, O Come Emmanuel rather than Silent Night. It was anticipatory, dark, quiet in feel, very different from the carol services before Christmas, which pretty well replicate the ones on Christmas Day. Everyone loved it; a break from the relentless commercial drive outside.

In fact, the withering of Advent is suggestive of the character of contemporary Britain, which doesn’t do deferred gratification. It’s turkey, mince pie, festive lights from any time after Bonfire Night. Collectively and individually, we just can’t wait. But the upshot of starting the turkeys and sparkly dresses at the beginning of December is that we’re over Christmas way before its time.

As soon as we’ve done New Year’s Eve, in fact, bang in the middle of the Twelve Days of Christmas, we’re on to the next thing, which is diet and fitness: New Year, New You (hah!). But that’s exactly when the celebrations should be happening, right through to January 6 and beyond. Previous generations felt that this was just when you should be having the neighbours round. Gunter’s Confectioner’s Oracle (1830) observed: “January is perhaps of all the months in the year the most favourable to enjoyments of the table.” Dead right. There’s no time, in fact, when you need your Christmas pudding, starchy carbs and festive lights more.

It might be asking a bit much of contemporary Brits to go in for medieval Advent abstinence but we probably could slow down getting onto the next thing — the sales, which is what Cyber Monday is about. Actually, nearly five million Brits do their online shopping on Christmas Day. That’s just vile. In the US, Black Friday is a family festival with its own traditions (the big rush on WalMart). Meanwhile a really old, traditional feast, St Nicholas’s Day (December 6), goes unnoticed outside northern Europe— and he was, obvs, the actual Santa.

We’re missing out when we bypass Advent. It’s got a character of its own — expectant, anticipatory, yep, magical — and the getting-ready bit is the whole point, psychologically and theologically. Premature gratification is brilliant for the retail sector but for the rest of us it means the tinsel, the lights and Mary’s Boy Child lose their charm way before they should. Bring back Advent.

Melanie McDonagh: If we bypass Advent we'll be over Christmas way before its time

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