How to Make the Most of Advent in South Africa

Advent in summer is not always conducive to preparing for the coming of the Lord at Christmas, but Sarah-Leah Pimentel suggests that simple acts may help us give meaning to the season. 

Every year, I tell myself that this Advent will be better than my spiritual preparation for Christmas last year. But each year it’s the same. On the last Sunday of the liturgical year, on the feast of Christ the King, I mentally map out what I want to do for Advent. But before I know it, Advent has flown past, it’s Christmas Eve and I’m on the way to Midnight Mass.

If I’m lucky, I’ve managed to put up the Christmas tree by December 16; but more often than not, the oversized nativity set (inherited from my grandmother), the comparatively miniscule Christmas tree and the string lights go up the weekend before Christmas. By the time Christmas Day comes around, I’m still struggling to catch myself. Often I feel despondent over having insufficiently prepared for Christ to be born in my heart this year.

In our Catholic tradition, we have two “purple” seasons. Lent and Advent are marked as periods of spiritual preparation for the two greatest events in salvation history — the birth of Jesus, and the passion and resurrection of Christ.

Both are meant to be periods of intensive prayer, the intention of which is to revitalise our personal relationship with Christ and reflect in gratitude for God “who so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16). He took on our human experience out of love for us and seeks to draw us more deeply into himself.

While Lent is more sombre with its focus on contrition and repentance, Advent is meant to be a joyous awareness of God’s love and our desire for him to be born anew in our hearts at Christmas. During Advent, we’re invited to increase our opportunities for silence, prayer and reflection through our reading of the scriptures and the sacramental life of the Church.

Advent in north and south

I think this is much easier in the northern hemisphere. It’s cold outside (according to a secular song popular around Christmas), and in the heart of winter, there is a desire to retreat into the sanctuary of our homes with warm drinks and quiet music playing in the background. The frozen earth is conducive to an interior attitude of waiting and longing for new life.

In South Africa, it’s the opposite. Advent coincides with the end of the school year and plans for summer holidays. Working adults are frantically trying to finish projects before everything shuts down for three weeks. There are Christmas parties and year-end functions. We’re dreaming of swimming pools or the beach, and long, hot days in the sun.

Everything in our southern hemisphere speaks to the anticipated relief of things ending, not new things beginning.

For the elderly or those who have recently lost a spouse or a child, this is also a very painful and lonely time. When the spirit is grieving, it’s much harder to enter a spiritual routine of intense prayer and reflection.

With everything going on at the end of the year, I have come to accept that the texture of my Advent devotions need to be more practical. In our Christian life, we are called to prayer and action.

Love is both the greatest of all prayers and the most effusive of all actions. We often sing “they’ll know we are Christians by our love”. If we can’t avoid the busy-ness of December madness, then why don’t we transform our prayer into loving actions? Prayer in action can also be a very visible sign of our faith, especially for young children and those who might not know Christ.

‘Christmas House’ memories

What I most remember about Advent as a child was the end-of-term Christmas play where I learnt the beautiful story of Jesus’ birth. I recall making standup nativity scenes in old shoeboxes, singing Christmas carols, and visiting the “Christmas House” down the street from my parish church in Malvern, Johannesburg.

In fact, that Christmas House might have been the most expansive evidence of active prayer-action during Advent, not just for me but also for everyone in our neighbourhood. Every year, Des and Doreen Steele, an elderly couple from our parish who had never had children, transformed their home into a magical wonderland for children.

The house was done up in lights. In their living room sat a life-size Santa and Mrs Claus. There were Disney figurines skating on a frozen lake in one of the windows. Everywhere, there were Christmas trees and Christmas decorations. There was a large Nativity scene in their yard.

The couple would welcome groups of children into their home every evening, and with the joyous art of storytelling, they explained how Santa had read all the Christmas letters and lovingly prepared the gifts. Each room told a different part of the story.

Then you got to the last “station” of the tour – and found yourself outside and back in front of a large nativity set. There Des and Doreen explained to the children that as wonderful as the story of Santa was, there was an even more beautiful story to be told. And then they would tell the children about the Baby Jesus born in Bethlehem and laid in a manger.

They did this every night for nearly a month each year. When I posted this memory on Facebook a few weeks ago, there were so many heartwarming comments from my friends in that neighbourhood, and they spoke about how the Christmas House made a deep impact on them too.

The Steeles found a way to bring the true message of Christmas into a secular world. Their own peace, silence and prayer was disrupted for those weeks of Advent and Christmas, but the impact of their gift to the neighbourhood and parish children lives on, decades later.

Prayer for the season

As I reflected on how the Steeles transformed Advent and Christmas into prayer for others, I realised that our prayer in this season is in passing on the gift of joy to others. We are praying when we prepare a Santa’s Shoebox for needy children. We are praying as we put up the decorations or attend a carol service.

We are preparing our hearts to receive Christ as we make our Christmas wreath and light an Advent candle each week. We are praying as we plan and cook the Christmas meal or hope that there will be no family tension this year.

And if, in all the hustle and bustle, we can find a few quiet moments to contemplate God’s immense love that plays out in the Nativity, then we have added a few pieces of straw to the manger and are ready to welcome the Baby Jesus when he is born once again in our hearts on Christmas Day.

Sarah-Leah Pimentel is a media practitioner based in Cape Town.

Published in the December 2024 issue of The Southern Cross magazine