Anxiety and Advent Calendars

I don’t want to feel anxious and frantic this month. I need to savor these days; they are my favorite days of the year.

I’ve realized I dislike Advent calendars. 

Let me rephrase this: I like Advent calendars—I think they’re quite charming and festive looking—but I hate actually using them. 

Advent calendars create anxiety in me.  

I love December and the holiday season. I like to really savor all its rituals and be as intentional as possible about celebrating this season where we deliberately focus on giving and creating joy for others. So I hate how the Advent calendar, with its one fewer pasteboard door or window remaining to open each day, reminds me how quickly these days go by. 

Like anyone, I can feel panic about how few days remain before Christmas and how much still remains to be done—the gifts to make, the packages to ship, the baked goods to deliver to neighbors. Though we’re in the season of longest nights, my December sleep patterns are usually less robust than other times because my mind, filled with Christmas plans, is like a rickety old electric tree-topper star, of the knob and tube variety, brightly lit and buzzing slightly. Sleep evades me and I creep from bed in the dark, pulling on a sweater for warmth, and go down to my workspace in the basement—which is warm next to the furnace—and make presents when I should be sleeping. 

As often as I can, I like to hand-make gifts and cards for my loved ones. I try to keep the holiday from feeling like a shopping spree and more like a ritual of creativity. As I’m stitching tiny felted wool ornaments or festive garlands for friends, I celebrate the friendship with each stitch made, each strand of garland lengthened. Hand-making gifts is a joy I look forward to each year, and it takes a lot of time. The damned Advent calendar reminds, day by day, me how little time remains for that joy. 

But beyond that, the Advent calendar, looking more and more ramshackle and disheveled each day as tiny cardboard doors are pried loose and left hanging open, is a visual representation of the ravages of time: how quickly time passes, how it pries loose what we want to keep holding, how it makes all things end. 

During this pandemic year, when our calendars aren’t filled with holiday parties or gatherings with friends, I thought December would feel more spacious. That, I thought, was one gift this pandemic holiday could deliver with aplomb. I thought I’d be able to luxuriate in making gifts and really go all-out this year for those I love. But I forgot that with so many more of us relying on shipping gifts through the mail rather than delivering them by hand, the postal system would jam up like the freeways do when a sudden snowstorm hits right during the afternoon commute. I forgot I’d need to have all my presents ready to mail weeks ago to guarantee they get there in time. So I’m feeling more rushed than ever in this year that I thought would feel slow and savored. 

I don’t want to feel anxious and frantic this month. I need to savor these days; they are my favorite days of the year. My husband and I will not gather with family or friends this holiday. So much is already forsaken this year, and I need to cherish the things I still can. 

So this morning I made a choice: I stopped opening the paper doors on the Advent calendar a dear friend gave me. I stopped the countdown. And I closed the doors I’d already opened. The calendar itself is prettier this way, anyway. 

I’m going to focus on wholeness. I’m going to focus on being present to each day and enjoying what it offers rather than seeing it as a countdown. And I’m going to make my gifts with joy and pleasure, getting them into the mail when I can but not fretting if they’re not received by Christmas day. 

This is a small step, but it’s also a big one. It’s a way of being gentle with myself, which is especially important during a year marked by brutality and loss. But being gentle with ourselves is an intentional practice that matters always. 

And that’s a door I want to keep opening.