The Way a New Beginning Comes

As this year rushes toward its inevitable finish, plowing through poultry and evergreens and obligatory ball drops thick with crowds of strangers, I am determined to do the holidays differently. So far, however, I’ve done nearly everything we always do. The gifts have been purchased and are waiting in the basement. 2025’s remaining weekends have been filled with various gatherings alongside items I must remember to bring scribbled in the margins of my planner. And our Advent Calendar, a gray wooden house with 24 little drawers sits in the corner of our kitchen. It is a tradition that I have grown to hate, coordinating each night’s activity or small gift with our daily calendar, second guessing myself each step of the way.

When the kids were small, the drawers were filled with the standard chocolates. One year, Rudolph figurines hid inside select boxes. Mini matchbox cars the next. But as the boys grew, those small surprises just didn’t bring the same smiles, and so my efforts grew, too. A couple years ago, they opened drawers which brought them midnight milkshakes and trips to the movies. Night hikes and hot cocoa bars came the following year. And last Christmas, I splurged and bought tickets to see the lights at Meijer Gardens, which is right about where my holiday spirit ran dry.

It was a cold night, yes, but my kids rarely surrender to weather. Yet, as we pulled into the lot and the big surprise was revealed, we were met with grumbles from the backseat.

“This is our surprise? A bunch of lights!”
“It’s freezing cold. I want to go home.”
“I’m not getting out of the car.”

But, of course, we did get out of the car because I’d already paid the hundred dollars for our family to be there. We trudged through the frigid night, my big boys shoving one another off the path, my younger ones bickering about who-knows-what, as my husband and I tried our hardest not to grab them by their puffy little hoods and drag them back to the still-warm SUV, now nearly a mile away.

“How did we end up here?” I wondered. How did this house of drawers become my own personal hellscape? How did the anticipation of something so sacred shift into a thing of growing dread?

“But in Advent, the season when sunlight is fading and cold is creeping in, all creatures know that to be well, they must wait, they must slow their usual way of doing things.” Gayle Boss

I had been doing the opposite. With each new December, I was ramping up my to-do list, adding more requirements to an already hectic schedule. I was taking my usual way of doing things and multiplying it. And for what? So, my kids could melt down on a random Tuesday in the middle of an over-priced light show surrounded by strangers? So, I could take yet another photo as I begged them to pretend we were happier than we were? So, we could miss the simple gift of winter in search of some man-made miracle?

Enough. Enough of that now.

This Thanksgiving, I tried my best to slow down, to try things a different way. They were baby steps, to be sure. Instead of homemade mac-n-cheese, the boys picked Kraft. Instead of fresh green beans or gravy from drippings, I bought cans. We mixed up our homemade sides and desserts a day before to make for a lazier Thursday morning. And puzzles. We did lots and lots of puzzles. I even burned the good candles.

The things I refused to put off, they backfired. Our always-rushed-day-after-Thanksgiving-trip to cut down a beautiful-but-not-too-big-tree ended up with pouty boys sent back to the truck as my husband wrestled a dull handsaw against a beautiful-and-too-big-once-again evergreen. A couple days later, on an already busy Sunday, when we got ready to decorate it, those boys found themselves sent to their rooms. I called it a night and left the two-trunked fir adorned with only lights as I snuggled alongside the son who seemed the most in need of rest, but we were all in need of rest. December 1 was coming in the morning, and my tree would greet the dawn without adornment. The world would keep spinning, and I, for once, would stop.

As we headed into Monday, I began to wonder if my continuation of our Advent calendar was just another big mistake. But, as she always does, Mother Nature shows us what we need, and the evening gifted us space through quickly falling snowflakes. Our boys found a break from after-school obligations due to the storm, giving our family an opportunity to try the tree again. Together, we unwrapped ornaments, one by one, and each boy took their time selecting which branch would have the honor of holding their favorites.

Once the tree was laden with memories, we turned to the little house with the waiting drawers, and my boys voted for which child would open that first door. Much to my surprise, they accomplished this without charley horses or tears and sat quietly while their brother read the note he found inside.

“The first day of Advent, a season of waiting,
A lesson for boys who think December’s for taking.
Look under the tree to see what is in store,
Then open your heart to find something more.”

They pulled the gift from under the tree and unwrapped All Creation Waits by Gayle Boss. “We are going to do things differently this year, and this book will help us do that. Each night, I’ll read one page and we will learn about a different animal and what they do in winter to survive.” I read them the intro that reinforced the need to slowly reveal each day’s animal and the knowledge that creature holds. One day, one page at a time. We would all just need to wait.

“Waiting in the cold dark will be hard
But each creature knows
The dark is not an end. It’s a door.
It’s the way a new beginning comes.

Yes, the drawers will still hold chocolates, while some will prompt a beloved Christmas movie, cozy jammies, and surely, a puzzle or two. But there will also be a few minutes every night where we slow down to learn from the wild, natural wonders, the animals whose instincts do not steer them wrong, who move in accordance with the winter world and the rest it inspires, the waiting it demands. And with each page, I hope we find that same patience.

I have begun to carefully edit the items inside our busy December, keeping the parts that fill us up while cutting the ones that threaten to deplete us. And while I may not be able to pause my breath like Painted Turtle and cover myself in soft Earth (as much as I would love to somedays), maybe I can slow our family down long enough to rest inside the gift of winter, to stop trying to create our own miracles and, instead, wait patiently for them to arrive.

Ashley, Woman of a Certain Grace