Changing & Unchanging
Wednesday, December 3, 2025
During the years when my daughter did Nutcracker, I had a system for Christmas decorating: all holiday decor was packed into bins labeled Week 1, 2, 3 or 4. I only put up the week 1 decorations the first week of Advent. By the time Christmas arrived, the house was fully decorated. I created this system because Nutcracker rehearsals began in the fall and performances ran up until a few days before Christmas. It was impossible to make our home cheery and drive her to and fro.
To say that my life looks different now is an understatement. The only one who needs help with transportation is my dog Luna and her most frequent “need” is help from the floor to my lap.
I casually mentioned on Thanksgiving Day that I planned to put up our Christmas tree the next day. My youngest daughter said, “But not the ornaments, right?!? We do that together.” I was surprised — for years, it took cajoling to get their help hanging ornaments. But it turns out she was serious. Before she headed back to Knoxville, I agree to put the tree up but leave it without ornaments until she and her sisters could be there.
As moms are frequently asked to do, I pivoted. I put up the tree. I added the lights, then the ribbons. It still looked a bit bare, so I made some salt dough ornaments and strung them on garland. I’m satisfied for now. I have lights to hold the darkness at bay and I get to look forward to time with my daughters while we finish the decorating.
How does your Advent or Christmas look different than it used to? How has it remained the same?
The Sunday before Advent begins is Christ the King Sunday. I learned this year that the feast of Christ the King is a fairly new one. It was first celebrated in 1926 and was established by Pope Pius XI in part as a response to Mussolini’s rise to power. The feast of Christ the King reminds us that the world changes, but Jesus doesn’t.
The Church has admittedly seen far more change over its life than I have in my half-century. And yet. The world is different now than it was when I was growing up — or even than it was a few decades ago. How is Christmas different? How is it the same?
I have a December birthday, so I’ve always felt a special kinship with Advent and Christmas. It felt a bit like all of the lights and decorations were for Santa, Jesus and me. It’s always felt like a magical time of year to me and I love the invitation to make my home look a bit different than it does the rest of the year. What a gift to live in the northern hemisphere when Advent coincides with the winter solstice and we use lights to fight back the literal and symbolic darkness.
Christmas is still about gifts and time with family (my own little one and my extended one). It’s still about the original Christmas story and the favorites we’ve found over the years, especially Star Over Bethlehem and Angela and the Baby Jesus. It’s still about midnight Mass as a family… despite it starting too early to end at midnight.
But Christmas morning is vastly different. My husband and I will be the first ones awake. We won’t hear excited whispers as they begin unpacking their stockings while we slowly wake up. Not every daughter will wake up in our home. We’ll get a slow start to the day and gather mid-morning.
On Christ the King day, I pondered how the church can respond to our changing world. I’m also wondering how I respond to my own changing world. What do I hold loosely and what do I cling to?
What are the fundamentals of Advent and Christmastide to you? How is your life or world changing in a way that invites reinvention?
Love changes the way we live. Knowing we are loved for who we are, not what we do, frees us to live fully. We aren’t loved because we are moral. But God’s love draws us to the truth and so we live more honestly, more authentically.
Love for our families also changes the way we live. The system I had for Advent years ago served us during that time, but it would be a disservice to continue doing things that way. As we approach the time when our daughters may have to choose between Christmas with us or with a partner, I long to see clearly what things matter to me and why. I don’t want to insist on a particular tradition because we have always done it that way. Instead, I want to respond in love to their longings and desires as well as my own.
What changes are happening or are on the horizon for you? What is your posture towards those changes?
What I’ve Been Reading (and Watching) Lately
via library loan:
Snowdrift by Helene Tursten
When Advent arrives, I want all winter books, all the time. This might not be as much fun if I lived somewhere reliably cold or snowy, but it’s a delight to read about a foot of snow coming down overnight from the warmth of my Nashville home. Snowdrift fits the bill — it’s set in Sweden and offers a twisty mystery. (Tursten also wrote An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good, which was delightful.)
via audiobook:
Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma by Claire Dederer
This is not my stereotypical Advent listen. Dederer writes about the challenges of consuming (or boycotting) the art of monstrous geniuses — think Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, Michael Jackson, Bill Cosby. How does the artist influence our experience of the art? It’s a challenging book in the best of ways.
via Hulu:
A Very Jonas Christmas Movie
Our family watched this on Thanksgiving night and it was the perfect start to Christmas movie watching season. It’s meta, it’s funny and it’s about sibling relationships instead of romantic ones - pretty much perfect family viewing.
May we have the grace this Advent season to hold unchanging truth close to our hearts as we navigate our changing lives.
Peace, Grace & Hope,
Shannon