In this hot, vast land we call Australia, one can long for snow. Certainly, it is diverting to imagine Advent in the North, in New York City (if you have been there) – and most people can dream of Dickens’ London (the city that soothes and perfects Ebenezer Scrooge).
The snow is white there, in the Northern places. It lightly coats things first – trees, cars, and slow-moving people – and then it falls more determinedly.
It is still gentle, though, the snow in the Northern Hemisphere. As imagined by an Australian, Advent snow (in Rome, in London, in Washington DC) is dust. It is confetti. It flutters and swirls.
Of course, that is nonsense.
Still, the Northern Advent and Christmas imagery is compelling. Certainly, in a hot, dry land, one’s thoughts turn naturally to winter fantasies.
Indeed, our inherited stories, our visual cues, all our accumulated English-speaking ideas about what Advent and Christmas should be (no, must be), these encourage us to long for snow. We yearn for a White Christmas, as silly as that sounds.
In the middle of a desert continent, many Australians actually experience a genuine desire to roast Christmas chestnuts, drink eggnog, and wear cable-knit sweaters.
Certainly, Catholics down under can become dis-orientated. Red dust. Dust storms. Heat and wind? What does that have to do with what is going on in the Church?
A similar thing occurs in Lent. Many of the symbols, then, point to spring and summer, to new life.
In Australia, however, the shadows really do lengthen on Good Friday, and there is no climatic relief in sight.
There is actually less daylight, not more, on Easter Sunday.
So what?
Australian Catholics grow up, then, between two worlds. There is the world we know from the cultural and liturgical cues provided by our historically Northern, culturally European faith and then there is the great hulking, sometimes rudely physical fact of our sunburnt continent.
It really does hulk, too. Australia is massive. It fills one’s mind with silence, dust, and heat.
There is no support in those facts and impressions, however, for cultural relativism. It is too easy to observe the fact of Australia’s difference, to parse our unique climatic experience of Advent for instance, and then make some tired claim about the Mass (too European) or the faith (stuffed with cultural, rather than properly spiritual, add-ons).
People, even well meaning Australians, have been making those sorts of claims for decades.
A Catholic in the North is the same in essentials (body, heart, soul, and mind) as a Catholic in the South. It would be irrational to claim otherwise. All Catholics are human, too, at least as far as we know. Man needs God, which is certain. God does not change, which is faith. The Catholic Church is where man finds God. Ergo, end of story.
What one can say, however, is that Advent takes Catholics by surprise. Again, it is like Lent. Both seasons come when we are settling down into sin. Perhaps we are lazy and weak, content to miss truth, and beauty, and goodness – but Advent calls us out of that rut. Advent calls us back to Christ.
Advent in Australia might be unique in this: In Australia, perhaps, one feels a little different by the time Advent arrives. For same sex attracted men, certainly, Advent down under comes as a Summer shock.
The Summer sun brings with it Summer bodies, and Summer’s special temptation is carnality.
However, the Church calls us out of that rut. Advent calls us back to Christ.
For Catholics generally, and finally, Advent interrupts the flow. It pushes us forward into the manger. We turn our minds to Christmas, to the shepherds, and their flocks, and the angels, and the lowing beasts, and that unimaginably sweet vision of Mary – beautiful and holy – swaddling the Son of God.
Advent prepares the way, then, and it cleans us up. Done right, Advent makes us ready for all the wonder of Christmas night, and it does not matter where we are or what climate we experience. Advent is everywhere, and it is now.
O come, O come, Emmanuel.