Category: Advent

Today is the first Sunday of Advent, the beginning of four weeks of Christian preparation for Christmas.

Most Catholics I know have some sort of wreath, with purple, pink, and white candles. (Today we lit a purple candle.) Those with kids usually have an Advent calendar as well.

The US Bishops have some online Advent prayers and resources. This year, with barely any time between Thanksgiving travels and Advent, we improvised a bit more than usual, and used an Advent “psalm” from a book that was handy, Fr. Edward Hays’s Prayers for a Planetary Pilgrim.

Advent is one of those times, like Lent, when we laypeople are especially encouraged to receive the sacrament of Reconciliation; my Advents are usually not heavy on penitence, but I’m considering making that a focus this year. For the first Advent in many years, I was a lector in my parish, and the Second Reading (Rom 13:11-14) got me examining my conscience.

. . . not in orgies and drunkenness . . .

Doing good on these counts.

. . . not in rivalry and jealousy . . .

Here, not so much.

Msgr. Scollen, in his homily, noted that the First Reading was about “nonviolence,” the second, “personal lifestyle.” I’ll be meditating on them more this week and discerning the steps I should take this Advent.

Today is the first Sunday of Advent, the four-week period of preparation for Christmas.

Advent isn’t as project-oriented as Lent, but there are many more popular rituals to mark this season. Notably, each Sunday you light candles around a wreath while praying. Today we light a purple candle, next week two, the next week we add a pink candle, then another purple, finally lighting all four plus a white candle for Christmas.

If there are children in the house, you probably have an Advent calendar with little pieces of candy attached to each day, a clever incentive for the children to remind you of the daily Advent prayer. The U.S. Bishops’ Advent website contains a simulated calendar with prayers instead of snacks.

Every year I also like caroling with friends and watching It’s a Wonderful Life with Bruce; one of my goals this Advent is to integrate them into these daily and weekly practices.

Most of all, this year I’m looking forward to sharing these traditions with a non-Catholic Christian friend who knows very little about this stuff, and hoping to gain a deeper appreciation of Advent in so sharing.

Ebenezer Scrooge was a businessman whose single employee, Bob Cratchit, a married father of four, worked for starvation wages. In the opening pages of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, we learn that Scrooge believes he is overtaxed by the government and “cannot afford to make others merry.” He doesn’t see himself as a miser, but as a victim of a bad economy. When Cratchit makes even the most modest suggestion of better working conditions (an extra lump of coal on the fire, a single day off a year), Scrooge threatens him with unemployment.

On November 6, 2009, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the unemployment rate had climbed to 10.2%, representing 16.4 million Americans, double the number of jobless when the recession began in December 2007. The government also reported that an additional 808,000 people had become “discouraged workers,” those “not looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them.” Perhaps most alarming in terms of race relations and future prospects, the unemployment rates for blacks was 15.4% and 25.7% for all teenagers.
Continue reading “Scrooge and the Jobless Recovery”