Advent on campus

By Susan Olson

The new senior chaplain at my university recently sent out an email informing the staff that we would not be decorating the office or playing seasonal music during the holiday season. Some people were disappointed by this decision; I breathed a sigh of relief.

The decision was based on a desire to make the office space welcoming to students from a wide array of religious backgrounds. I support this whole-heartedly.

Our office has become a quiet space where students can experience relief from the gaudy, noisy Christmas that’s all around them. This applies to Christians as well as to students of other faiths: they can come here to find a quiet space in which to “celebrate” Advent, a season that is in many ways incongruous with December on a college campus.

Instead of a beautiful season of longing and examination and liminality, students find their knowledge being examined by others. They race to finish their coursework, checking off papers and lab reports and exams. Faculty members push through piles of papers, performing mathematical gymnastics, feeding registrars’ hungry databases. December on campus is all about finishing.

Since students are for the most part joyful souls, all these examinations and papers take place before a backdrop of holiday parties and decorations. Mistletoe is draped from hallway to hallway; lights twinkle in windows. Trees and tinsel are everywhere, and the scent of peppermint wafts through corridors. Even though it’s exam time, there’s a push to celebrate early and often. Some of it is pent-up energy. Some of it is trying to celebrate close friendships before exams and vacations. Some of it is just a desire to push back the encroaching darkness.

Of course the Christianity in Christmas parties here is watered-down. A Hindu student invited me to one of these parties. The invitation was littered with candy canes, angels and ivy. “I didn’t know you celebrated Christmas,” I said. “Oh not the Jesus Christmas, just the American one,” she said. I left hungry for Advent, hungry for the chance to wait for something, to stretch out and yearn.

I’ve been exchanging emails with a student who is discerning a call to the ordained ministry. He’s not from an Advent-observing tradition, but is trying it on for size this year. “It’s hard,” he writes, “to even find a physical place to experience Advent here. Everything’s just so loud and Christmasy.”

“Try hanging out in the chaplain’s office,” I replied. “We aren’t celebrating Christmas here yet—thanks be to God.”

Susan Olson is a chaplain at Yale University.

Comments

[Andy]

So here is my question -- which came first, Christmas or Advent? If, in Advent, we wait for the return (2nd coming) of Jesus, why do we celebrate it right before Christmas (and not, say, after Pentecost)? If Christmas is an older holiday than Advent, why would the true meaning of Christmas be expressed in Advent? If Christmas is the Christianisation of a pagan holiday, what is its true meaning?

[rick brand]

Wait! Are you in fact celebrating advent or observing nothing? Advent music, purple, no Christmas trees, no candy canes, no santa claus, I am all for that in you place. But if you are really just doing nothing then I may not find that very helpful for anybody.

[Ellie]

Advent is not for celebrating at all. It is for preparing and waiting. It is for getting our hearts and lives ready for the second coming of Christ. A reminder,if you will, that Christ came, is here, and will come. We might prepare for Christmas in that time, practice the play, preach about waiting expectantly, shop and bake cookies or whatever you need to do to be ready for both the secular and sacred (is there a difference?) part of the holiday. and then celebrate the holiday on the 25th! Our church has Advent music; the radio plays "Santa got Run Over by a Reindeer." They all work. It's a good time to teach the kids the words of the carols so you can go caroling on Christmas Eve. We live so much these days in a world where nobody wants to wait for anything. Doctors even induce labor for their own convenience for a baby whose sex is already known. We charge things we can't afford to pay for. All the more reason to slow down, take it easy. And wait.

[rick brand]

My question was whether or not they are doing all the things you say you, Ellie, are doing during Advent or are they doing nothing at Yale and saying that is Advent.

[Jason Byassee]

I love this. I'd have to be critical of an effort to strip away religious specificity in an effort to be open to all--surely not the way forward in interreligious conversation. Yet it becomes an opportunity for a good Advent for Christians around the chaplain's office. All things bear witness to the lordship of Christ then--if you look at them aright, whether intended to or not.

[Suzy]

It's very easy to turn the month after Thanksgiving into a headlong tumble toward that "American Christmas." (Thanks for that wonderful illustration, Susan!) But Advent, that time of looking forward in faith and hope, leaning forward, yearning for the new Jerusalem, is where we live our entire lives and work our ministries, and we can't manifest the truth of that yearning in a process that ends with a pile of crumpled wrapping paper. I don't believe we need to purge all "fleshly" material things from our anticipation of the Word made flesh, but I've found it much more difficult to start with the "stuff" and infuse it with the Word. I try very hard in my ministry and my family to convey that the Word lives here and the rest of the stuff (which I will get around to putting up before Christmas; really, I will!) is just visiting.

[rick]

On the Yale Campus is there being offered a way for the Muslims to honor their sacred time? Has the College Chaplain's office offered Jewish students a space for their tradition. Or is this simple the best work of the Chaplain's office is to offer nothing to anyone in the conviction that the office will give them a quiet space to be alone with the Alone?

[Susan O]

Yale offers a vibrant array of religious ministries. Students can and do practice many religions, including Christianity. So yes, indeed, there are Advent worship services. The University chaplaincy, though, is a multi-faith one, charged with serving students of any faith.

[Andy]

What interests me now is how, by being ecumenical and avoiding seasonal music, the office is also making particular theological statements ( statement that can be interpreted different ways). The office is being Reformed and Puritan (be rejecting images and material expressions of faith), ecumenical, evangelical (by drawing attention away from ritual and focusing attention on worship and Jesus), liberal (by rejecting crass materialism). Who knew that by doing less, you were doing so much!