I love the Christmas season, even if prior to becoming a Catholic I tried to invent it myself.  Admittedly it was an inchoate creation, based upon buying little treats each week, which I would hide away, in preparation for Christmas day. These were not, mind you, gifts for family members, just chocolates, candies, statues of Saint Nicholas, little crèches, anything that heightened my sense of the coming of Christmas. As Christmas arrived, I would find my bounty and pull it out for all to enjoy. I still do this, but now the spiritual and liturgical context is clear: Advent is the longing for the Savior, a penitential season of preparation for the Incarnate One. The New Catholic Encyclopedia describes the origins of Advent in the Church: “It was not until the birth of Christ was celebrated throughout the Church that Advent came into existence at all. Its name is derived from the ancient name for the feast, for Adventus, Epiphania and Natale are all synonymous first for the Incarnation itself, then for the feast that commemorates and celebrates the Incarnation. Christmas, as well as Epiphany, is not only the commemoration of the birth of Christ as a historical event, it is also and much more the celebration of the coming of God in the flesh as a saving event. The very celebration itself is a saving event that brings about the coming of Christ among humanity and anticipates his return in glory. The term Advent gradually came to designate the time before Christmas” (W. J. O’Shea and S. K. Roll, 133-34). Advent  is a time of waiting, and as Tom Petty argued, “the waiting is the hardest part.” Is the waiting the hardest part? To me, it is and it isn’t. There is something about the anticipation of the coming of Jesus Christ as vulnerable infant, in the flesh, that is simply exciting. Every year it is new, every year it is a joy.

 Every year, too, as we prepare for Christmas, we are made aware that we prepare not only to remember and rejoice in Christ’s first coming, but in his second coming. The readings for the first Sunday of Advent ask us to prepare spiritually for the coming of Christ. The Gospel of Luke has Jesus asking us to “Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy from carousing and drunkenness and the anxieties of daily life” (Luke 21: 34). Paul asks the Thessalonians, and us, “to strengthen your hearts, to be blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his holy ones” (1 Thessalonians 3: 13). It is a reminder that we must prepare, that we await in anticipation the coming of the Lord, not only in his lowliness, but in his glory. This is exciting and apart from preparing spiritually, I am so hoping I can find my favorite licorice all-sorts this year. I will hide them until Christmas and then we can all share a little bit of sweetness and a whole lot of joy. I love the waiting. I am so excited, Christmas is coming!

John W. Martens is an associate professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minn,where he teaches early Christianity and Judaism. He also directs the Master of Arts in Theology program at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity. He was born in Vancouver, B.C. into a Mennonite family that had decided to confront modernity in an urban setting. His post-secondary education began at Tabor College, Hillsboro, Kansas, came to an abrupt stop, then started again at Vancouver Community College, where his interest in Judaism and Christianity in the earliest centuries emerged. He then studied at St. Michael's College, University of Toronto, and McMaster University, with stops at University of Haifa and University of Tubingen. His writing often explores the intersection of Jewish, Christian and Greco-Roman culture and belief, such as in "let the little children come to me: Children and Childhood in Early Christianity" (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009), but he is not beyond jumping into the intersection of modernity and ancient religion, as in "The End of the World: The Apocalyptic Imagination in Film and Television" (Winnipeg: J. Gordon Shillingford Press, 2003). He blogs at  www.biblejunkies.com and at www.americamagazine.org for "The Good Word." You can follow him on Twitter @biblejunkies, where he would be excited to welcome you to his random and obscure interests, which range from the Vancouver Canucks and Minnesota Timberwolves, to his dog, and 70s punk, pop and rock. When he can, he brings students to Greece, Turkey and Rome to explore the artifacts and landscape of the ancient world. He lives in St. Paul with his wife and has two sons. He is certain that the world will not end until the Vancouver Canucks have won the Stanley Cup, as evidence has emerged from the Revelation of John, 1 Enoch, 2 Baruch, and 4 Ezra which all point in this direction.