It feels like Christmas.
In Florida.
People are walking outside without jackets. School kids are boarding the buses in shorts.
And it’s dark.
Only a few days out from the solstice, we rise long before sunrise. At my house, the outdoor Christmas lights are on before we get the daily mail. But this December is darker than most because it’s also so warm. “El Nino” won’t let the jet stream dip down far enough for us to have snow. So the ground is dark when the sun goes down. There is no frozen white stuff to reflect the streetlights, the moon, or twinkling stars. It’s just dark.
“El Nino” means “the boy,” and actually refers to the Christ-child. I suppose that’s because this weather pattern always develops around Christmas. People who don’t like snow might be glad to give credit to Jesus for warm Decembers, but for me, the snow makes long nights and short days more bearable.
I’m trying to resign myself to a brown Christmas and make the best of it. (Meteorologists are predicting we’ll top 60 degrees on Christmas Day.) I sit in our living room with no light but the tiny colored bulbs strung on the tree, listening to seasonal music on the stereo, and reminding myself that all this darkness is what Advent is really about. We are preparing to celebrate the birth of Christ – the coming of the Light of the World. Advent bids us to sit in the darkness and ponder the gift of light.
This invitation isn’t as clear as it used to be. Our lives are full of artificial light that turns on with the flip of a switch. When it goes out, getting it back on is usually a matter of replacing a bulb, or in extreme cases, a circuit breaker. Light is around us all the time. When natural light retreats, we still see the flicker of the television screen, headlights on cars, street lamps, and all those red and green digital dots and clock readouts that are still burning after you’ve supposedly “turned out the lights.” Most people alive today have never experienced total darkness.