For me, Advent is also a time of music, and nothing says Christmas better than music. I’m not only talking about Christmas music.
Advent is a time for the family to come and wait together for Christmas when Christians celebrate–yet again– the birth of Jesus.
While it would be lovely to share some gorgeous adult choral music during your Advent time at home, I highly recommend learning to celebrate Christmas through the eyes of a child:
18 At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”
2 He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. 3 And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4
Matthew 18: 1-4
I’ll try not to go out on a huge limb about this topic, but keep in mind that I am a William Blake scholar, and I wrote one of my theses about the importance of becoming like a child. William Blake wrote the Songs of Innocence and Experience, and his treatise was that the child within us is our purest and most innate state.
There are no children in my home now, and I no longer teach little children, but I cherish opportunities to see the world as a child might see it.
A perfect song to capture the essence of Light is from Disney’s movie Tangled: I See the Light.
I See the Light
Lyrics
“All those days watching from the windowsAll those years outside looking inAll that time never even knowingJust how blind I’ve beenNow I’m here, blinking in the starlightNow I’m here, suddenly I seeStanding here, it’s all so clearI’m where I’m meant to be
What if, instead of saying “You” we say “Now that I see Jesus?”
I deliberately referenced Light several times in my picture book The Donkey’s Song.
“A Bit of the Night Turned to Day”:
There it is.
The work that God began in Genesis was fulfilled when Jesus was born.
In the beginning, the world was dark, but eons ago, God created Light. Many years later, God sent His son Jesus to be the eternal Light of the World.