who is that crazy Catholic chick?

[Note: I started writing this about two weeks ago, when it was actually timely. So just pretend you're reading this before Christmas, when the stores were full of the relevant items.]

I grew up Catholic. Well, it happened to a lot of us. According to the Catholic church, I am probably "lapsed." although I suppose some of the things I've written might be sufficient to get me to "excommunicated" if anyone cared. I don't. I consider myself an ex-Catholic, and anyone who insists otherwise is in risk of receiving a very dirty look indeed. In fact, I have been disgusted with some of the things the Catholic Church has done in recent years that seem more political or holier-than-thou and less in line with the charitable acts from the New Testament.

I spent 12 years in Catholic schools, went to Mass every week during that time, and some things just stick in your head. I remember my English teacher from my senior year in high school, who made us read James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, telling us about the author.
"He thought he'd given up being a Catholic, but you can see in his writing here that it's just not true. YOU CAN NEVER LEAVE, no matter what you might think," she warned us ominously. She was an ex-nun and still a devout Catholic. My mental response was two words long and rebellious. I'd leave the church if I wanted. I'd write about what I wanted. So there.

Sometimes I realize, with a sigh, that she had a point. The stuff that we grow up with never quite leaves us, whether it's religion or suburbia or family dynamics. Sometimes the Inner Catholic Schoolgirl appears and gets very fussy.

Advent calendars were what triggered the latest appearance of the hidden Catholic streak in me. Maybe I hadn't paid attention in previous years, but this year I kept hearing from friends about the Advent calendars they bought for their kids, or seeing such calendars in stores.

The Advent calendars they are talking about are entirely secular. They have a door or drawer for every day -- and some stores have wooden calendars with big doors and drawers that you can fit toys into, since too much candy is bad for children. You "get children ready" for Christmas by giving them a treat every day. That's what an Advent calendar is.

Okay, this is WRONG. I fully accept the secularization of Christmas, which as we all know is actually based on a pagan holiday, and so on and so forth. But Advent is Christian. Advent is the preparation for the birth of Christ, and it's not a fun time. It's a time for lighting somber purple candles (with perhaps one in pink for a touch of hope), singing slow and even dreary songs about waiting for the Messiah, and reading preparatory Bible verses.

The Advent calendars I had growing up were made of paper, and had a little door that you opened to read part of a Bible verse about the birth of Christ -- kind of an episodic thing -- perhaps with appropriate illustrations. Some of the calendars had chocolate in them, like in Bad Santa, but it was always that cheap yucky kind of chocolate, as though you had to wait until Christmas for the really good stuff.

The whole point of an Advent calendar, to my mind, is to prepare for Christmas by telling the religious story of Christmas. Not to add one more occasion for going out and buying tons more presents even if they're small ones. That's just ridiculous. Let the religious people have Advent, for goodness sake, as one noncommercial part of the season.

But friends tell me I'm crazy -- I hear stories about how they had secular Advent calendars growing up, that this has never been an exclusively religious thing, that I just grew up in a very Catholic atmosphere. Maybe. We did get extra candy in our shoes on St. Nicholas' Day, and that makes sense to me. Secular Advent calendars do not.

There she is -- the Inner Catholic Chick who disapproves of secular Advent calendars with all treats and no lessons, of churches who put up big festive light displays before Christmas, of non-Christians who give up candy for Lent so they'll lose weight. I want to give her a big hug and feed her Hershey kisses and remind her that it doesn't matter. Then I want her to go away so she'll stop singing "O Come O Come Emmanuel" in my head, which is too dreary for my holiday season.

Posted at December 28, 2009 11:25 AM