THE ADVENT OF HOPE

For some reason (let's blame the pandemic) most of the world put up their Christmas decorations this weekend. The house opposite, for example, has lit up its windows with a string of yellow stars and a neon blue snowman. Soon the rest of the street will follow with the jolly lights in the trees and moving snowflake lanterns, I've no doubt.

Oddly though, in this peculiar year, I haven't heard a single pip out of the First Day Adventers about it! The folks who are usually quite weird about Christmas Starts In December, are on the whole silent - or have given up and joined in the fun.

Well, either way, social media was cock-a-hoop with Christmas trees and excited kids hanging up candy canes yesterday, with two whole days of November still to go.

Admittedly it is technically the first week of Advent (the way Christmas falls this year means that the first of the four Advent Sundays is today in the ecclesiastical calendar). But this has definitely happened before, and I'm pretty sure I remember some scoffing at those who had had their advent calendars up too early in other years. Mind you, there's often some scoffing by those who had their advent calendars up too early, but that's another story.

Traditionally, each Sunday in Advent has a theme. This week's theme is hope.

I can't think of a better motif for the year. Hope might be the last thing a lot of people have left; the final glimmer that there could be an end to 2020, and a new start could be around the corner. It's impossible to underestimate the power of hope in these days, and even this morning I heard a quiver in someone's voice, describing the possibility that by Easter things would be 'back to normal'. The candle of hope represents the people - the people who, in Biblical terms, have 'seen a great light'. And that's us. There is always hope.

I think lots of us have put up our decorations early, probably for the same reason. Those twinkling stars across the way, the little jolly blue snowman and the fairy lights in the tree: they're all symbols of hope of something better, something we can look forward to that might just remind us that there's a normal world waiting on the other side.

I'm not going to knock it. I think it's rather beautiful.