Photo by courtesy of Tessa Bielecki
For over seventy years I spent Christmas in lands of cold, snow, and crackling fires, and these elements became integral to my feeling the Advent-Christmas season. Now in my early eighties, I live in “saguaro land,” the Sonoran Desert of southern Arizona where we have snow only in rare storms that may come in early spring. Christmas in the sunny desert was an adjustment for me, but it’s taught me to focus more on the unique and rich cultural elements of this part of the world in order to enter more deeply into the heart of Christmas.
The heart, of course, is the birth of Jesus, the Incarnation, God becoming flesh in our world. When I lived a more formal monastic life (before the “new monastic” life I lead today), I took the name “Tessa of the Incarnation” because this feast is central to my vocation and my witness in the world. So, with the exception of warm weather and lots of southwestern “stuff”—including tamales, mariachis, and red chili ornaments—my celebration of Christmas here in Tucson is essentially the same as ever.
A Radical Marian Advent
I’ve always believed that a good Christmas canno unfold without a deep Advent. And I’ve always believed that Advent is Advent. Christmas doesn’t come until December 24. But in our secular, consumer society, as Melanie McDonagh wrote years ago in “Don’t Stop the Party,” “Advent has been abolished and Christmas has been hideously elongated before it happens, yet truncated when it should be happening. The whole period of waiting for Christmas has been overtaken by the celebration of it.”
So I wait for Christmas in a radical Advent: no Christmas decorations, music, or parties. I wait for the baby to be born like the pregnant Mary of Nazareth, in the spirit of Carmelite poet Jessica Powers:
I live my Advent in the womb of Mary…
I knew for long she carried me and fed me,
Guarded and loved me, though I could not see.
But only now, with inward jubilee,
I come upon earth’s most amazing knowledge:
Someone is hidden in this dark with me.
I enhance the season of waiting with an Advent wreath, lighting one new candle each week. I commemorate the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, who came specially to this part of the world and communicates in flower and song. As my Colorado friend Carol Crawford wrote,
Each year as Christmas draws near,
We come, once more,
to the Advent Door,
To that Nazareth that whelms within –
Mary-space, openness to grace.
The O Antiphons
Best of all, on the last seven days before Christmas, I pray the “O Antiphons,” one of the richest Roman Catholic prayer traditions. Forty years ago this very year, I wrote my own version of these antiphons, combining several older translations. I meant this originally to be prayed aloud by a chorus of at least two voices, but now, living without community, I usually pray the antiphons alone every evening before bed. These seven little meditations reflect several ancient and primordial symbols and names for the Messiah. A friend recreated these for me on large pieces of wood in the traditional purple color of Advent. They include the Root of Jesse or Flower of Jesse’s Stem, the Key of David, and the Radiant Dawn or Morning Star, which I pray in harmony with the winter solstice and coming of the light on December 21. Each antiphon begins with a heartfelt cry of “O,” which poet Richard Wilbur calls the “o of ecstasy.” (You can read more about the O Antiphons on my website, tessabielecki.com.)
The Word became flesh and loved it because he immersed himself in the whole catastrophe.
The Saguaro Manger Scene
One of my greatest treasures was made by a young artist from Oaxaca, Mexico, who carved a Nativity out of wood and placed each moveable figure on top of a saguaro cactus! Jesus in his manger lies in the center.
The three crowned kings are remarkable. Instead of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, they bring more practical gifts: a fish, a chicken, and a pig.
This wondrous work of art sits all year in a shrine I created in my living room. But during Advent, I “hide” the infant Jesus, who can’t come out till midnight mass on Christmas Eve. This is a quaint old custom I find profoundly meaningful.
When it’s time to set up the second clay manger scene I bring out just before Christmas, I bless each figure in a simple ritual as I place them all in the stable. I hide this Jesus, too! And I keep the camels and kings far away at first, moving them closer to the crib each day.
In our troubled times, we need to remember the significance of this stable more than ever because, as W.H. Auden said, here “for once in our lives / Everything became a You and nothing was an It.” Or as G.K. Chesterton put it, here “all souls meet [italics mine] at the inn at the end of the world.”
Unsentimental Twelve Days of Christmas
In our crazy commercialized culture, by the time Christmas arrives, many people are partied out and tired of it. After celebrating on the day itself, as McDonagh wrote, “the whole thing concludes on December 26, just when it should be getting into full swing.” Not for me. I ache when I see so many Christmas trees out on the curb so soon after the 25th.
After a quiet Advent I’m ready for a sumptuous Christmas Day with prayer and vibrant liturgy, a magnificent tree I’ve just decorated, presents, friends, and a festive dinner. And then I’m ready for the full Twelve Days of Christmas. The celebration of the miraculous Incarnation has just begun and continues through the glorious feast of Epiphany on January 6 when I really pull out all the stops.
This is not a sentimental season for me. Christ’s cradle eventually becomes his cross.
On December 26 we celebrate the feast of St. Stephen, the first martyr, who was stoned to death. On December 28 we remember King Herod’s slaughter of the Holy Innocents. Both days commemorate sadly familiar tragedies, like today’s headlines in the news.
I remember the martyrdom of St. Thomas Becket on December 29 by reading selections from T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral. Some years I watch the great 1964 film with Peter O’Toole as King Henry and Richard Burton as Becket. If I feel up for it, I watch Joyeux Noel, the story of the spontaneous Christmas truce during World War I, which helps unite me with all those who celebrate Christmas in war-torn lands.
This sobriety does not quell my joy. It becomes sober intoxication with the paradox and beauty of a Baby who redeems the world that condemns him. The Word became flesh and loved it because he immersed himself in the whole catastrophe.
According to Chesterton, “The midst of the earth is a raging mirth / And the heart of the earth a star.” Raging mirth? Yes, but only if we take responsibility for our part in waging war.
Frank Horne, part of the Harlem Renaissance, wrote his poem about the Magi in 1942 during the insanity of World War II. Decades later, his words are a sobering Christmas mandate: “[A]s the bombs crash all over the world today, the real wise guys know that we’ve all got to go chasing stars again.”
In Horne’s hip but profound language, my Christmas in the saguaros means what it did in the snow: “hope that we can get back some of that Kid Stuff born two thousand years ago.”
