Advent/Christmas Issue (Fall Issue 12)
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Congratulations—you’ve reached the end of term! No doubt there were many times along the way when you thought you wouldn’t make it. And if you’ve still got a couple of exams or a paper to finish, you might still feel that way even now. But the end really is in sight, and Christmas is coming, however we’re feeling about it. So we offer this special Advent/Christmas issue of the Et Cetera, not to ignore our laments through some saccharine ‘cheer’, but to offer some hope in the midst of our shared darkness and stress. Wherever you are, and however you’re going to celebrate, have a Merry Christmas! —Steven, Alice, and Amy.
Christmas
A Clandestine Celebration
By Mark Glanville
Christmas day is a celebration, which Herod must not hear of—it is a whispered celebration. What would it feel like to celebrate Christmas with a whisper?
The dead of winter seems to welcome whispers. Why is Christmas celebrated on December 25th? The winter solstice—the longest night of the year—signifies much the incarnation. Palestine, under the Roman Empire, felt like winter. The population was poor, and it suffered under heavy taxation. Selfish puppet kings ruled Israel, and the emperor was honoured almost as a god. For Israel this was a time of exile—a return to Egypt. This was the long night of Herod’s reign, and the long night of proud, honour-hungry priests. Where was God?
Into this dark winter, a child is born. Not a full-grown, adult king, but a child. The incarnation is a glorious whisper, not a shout. The season has turned. Spring is around the corner, though it is not with us just yet. The nights are becoming shorter, night-by-night. The incarnation is joyful to be sure, and yet it is not the full-blooded victory celebration of Easter Sunday. Rather the incarnation is whispered into the night. The wise men slinked away, undercover, for fear of Herod. And a dreadful slaughter of infants follows. To be sure, Herod still rules in Palestine, for now.
In the Northern hemisphere today, we celebrate Christmas at a particular point within the seasonal calendar, in the dead of winter. The Christmas festival signifies the end of death, and the beginning of new life. We whisper about new life. New life isn’t yet our full reality, for Herod is still alive and well in our world.
This narrative raises the question: how can we celebrate advent and Christmas in a way that corresponds to this sacred story, this seasonal movement? How can we experience a strain of warmth, deep within Herod’s winter?
Here is my favourite clandestine-Christmas song: When the Glory of the Lord Descends, by Tom Wuest.
Christmas Shepherd’s Pie
By Trina Glover
On Christmas Eve, our family (in previous years with guests!) has a feast of Shepherd’s Pie and Angel Food Cake to commemorate the Angels’ proclamation of Jesus’ birth to the Shepherds. We decorate our table and dim the lights. Then by candle light we slice fresh braided pumpkin bread warm from the oven, pour wine, and serve the shepherd's pie. We read Jesus’ birth story together and remember. Then we bring out the Angel Food Cake. (Find a gluten-free recipe here!) Our kids know Christmas Eve means mountains of whipped cream and vast amounts of raspberries on their cake. We celebrate! For our family, this tradition is a tangible reminder of heaven coming down to earth to announce the Saviour’s arrival. It is heaven’s highest heralds pronouncing the Messiah’s birth to the lowliest of earth’s residents.
I usually make this meal in steps over a few days. Day 1: marinate meat. Day 2: slow cook meat, cook and assemble entire filling and store covered in casserole dish in fridge. Day 3 (Christmas Eve!): make potato topping and bake!
Filling:
2-3 lb sirloin steak OR cubed stewing beef
Zest of 1 lemon
2-3 crushed garlic cloves
½ cup dry red wine (cabernet sauvignon is good)
Splash olive oil
Marinate all together overnight. The next morning slow roast the meat in the marinade on low heat (225F) for a few hours until tender and cooked through. Shred meat and keep juices. Chill overnight or assemble the rest of the filling.
Splash olive oil
2 leeks
1 large onion
4-6 crushed garlic cloves
6 cups sliced mushrooms (cremini are good)
1 (1 lb) bag frozen peas and small dice carrots
2 Tbsp thickener (I prefer arrowroot starch or Bob’s Red Mill GF flour)
1 cup dry red wine
Pinch red pepper flakes
1 generous tsp fine salt
3 tsp chopped fresh rosemary
3 tsp fresh thyme leaves
Heat oil until glistening in a large sauté pan. Add leeks, onion, garlic, and a pinch of salt and sauté on medium heat until soft and somewhat caramelized (8-10 min). Add mushrooms and increase the heat, sautéing until most of the liquid released from the mushrooms has cooked off (important!). Add bag of frozen veggies and sauté a few more minutes. Stir in thickener until combined. Add shredded beef with its juices. Add red wine and simmer on medium heat until somewhat thickened. Add pepper flakes, salt, and herbs and gently simmer a few minutes longer. Taste for salt, herbs, etc (add a pinch of ground pepper if it needs a zip). Spread this filling into the bottom of a lightly oiled 4-quart casserole dish.
Splash olive oil
3-4 onions, very thinly sliced
Dash maple syrup
Using the same sauté pan, heat oil until glistening and then add onions. Cook on low-medium heat, stirring often. Once onions begin to brown, add splash maple syrup and cook until bubbly and caramelized. Taste and adjust salt, pepper, etc. Spread these lovely onions over the filling.
Topping:
3 lb Yukon gold potatoes, peeled and cubed
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp onion powder
1 generous tsp fine salt (to taste)
4 Tbsp butter
4 oz cream cheese
½ cup full fat sour cream
Generous dash ground pepper
Bring potatoes to boil in salted water. Simmer for about 15 minutes, until potatoes are fork-tender. Drain well and let sit in a colander for a few minutes for excess water to release (watery mashed potatoes are never good). Put potatoes and all other ingredients into your mixer and whip with paddle attachment or hand mixer until creamy with no lumps, scraping down sides often (this takes a few minutes because creaminess is the goal). Gently spread over the filling and caramelized onion layer. Spread all the way to the edges evenly. Sprinkle the topping with a dusting of paprika. Bake for about 30-35 minutes at 400F until bubbling around the edges. Broil for only a few minutes at the end to get a nice brown crusty top. Allow to sit for a few minutes before serving. Lasts well in fridge for 2-3 days.
The Oxen
By Thomas Hardy
Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
“Now they are all on their knees,”
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.
We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.
So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
“Come; see the oxen kneel,
“In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,”
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.
Metaphors for Hope
By Abigail Stocker
This whole pandemic, I’ve been trying to articulate for myself the way in which goodness and beauty have intensified into high-definition seemingly because the world has been extra chaotic and uncertain and dark.
It was harder in the summer. The world was simultaneously unfathomable and bright, long summer days and constant uncertainty married to planning and replanning for summer travel and fall courses and changing restrictions. Fall semester arrived and with it, remarkably, a new rhythm of life even amidst COVID. With it, too, the long shouldering of a semester’s burdens, which always look like more than I will be able to carry, which somehow end before I’m fully ready.
So until lately, I have been trying to look directly at the beauty and chaos and pin them down, to say what they mean when both are heightened. Advent—season of light in darkness, of hope amidst trouble—has seemed like an impending cliche, a too-obvious frame to hold the picture of the pandemic.
Yet Advent is arriving. With it have arrived metaphors—illustrating the meaning of goodness in images I thought I already understood. It turns out they didn’t fully shine with meaning until I encountered them in a pandemic.
The first is from Alice, who wrote recently on her blog that the small beauties of daily life are manna in exile: “We know what manna is because Exodus tells us how God provided for his people in the desert. They were there much longer than they ever thought they would be, wandering round and round while hoping for the promised land through decades of wilderness, eating the sweet, particular nourishment which God sent straight out of the sky. And as they fed on it, they dreamed.”
The second is courtesy of a Tom Wuest song (with thanks to Mark Glanville for giving us the song in Missional Church): everything good or true or noble or worthy or beautiful is oil that we can “burn for light” in our lamps as we await our bridegroom’s return. Wuest’s lyrics amount to a list of things to “burn for light” while “journeying through your dark night”: children’s laughter, creation all around you, people singing. The song ends with a vision of the coming light of the Lamb, healing the world and rendering our lamps unnecessary.
We are in a dark night, friends. Of course it’s overwhelming. Of course our individual lamps can’t compete, and our light can feel futile. But there is so much goodness that can keep our lamps fueled, shining real light into this world full of darkness.
So take a dance break between assignments, and celebrate the movement of your human body. Take a walk in a new park. Sing a good song (even that one that reminds you of last year’s Regent retreat and now makes you cry). Notice the way the clouds tumble across the sky or the rain runs rivers down your window. Breathe. (Deeply, even for just a minute.) Read a poem. Read a friend’s blog. Read Scripture. (Take it up and read!) Pray. Eat good food, and savor it. Give thanks (and also remember that word, εὐχαριστέω, for your next Greek test). Notice that piece of art your housemate hung in the kitchen, and ask her what it means. Make a phone call, and really listen to the cadence of another person’s voice. Order a 2021 planner. Dream about next year’s garden. Ask someone how you can help them, pray for them, rejoice with them. Light a candle for your next Zoom call.
(“Be joyful,” says Wendell Berry, “though you have considered all the facts.”)
These things are manna, given to us day by day. They remind us that our hope has substance, that God is coming, that he was incarnate and enters into the life of this uncertain, brooding, beautiful world. They are circumspect, yet point to the truth.
Our light will not overcome the darkness. Only the Word can do that. But we are called to keep our lamps lit while we wait for him to come, and there is so much fuel for the gathering.
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