UNHURRYING FOR THE HOLIDAYS

December has become the most hurried month of the year. The calendar fills, the shopping list grows, and even when our bodies finally sit still, our minds are racing down the to-do list and upcoming events. Under all the too much muchness, we miss the goodness of our lives before God that the season is meant to celebrate.

But you cannot arrive at hope, peace, joy, or love in a hurry. Advent is an invitation to slow down enough to receive the gifts we are frantically trying to purchase or manufacture. In Luke's nativity story, everyone seems to marvel and move on, except one person:

But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart.

— Luke 2:19

Below are seven simple practices to help you unhurry for the holidays. This is not a checklist, and adding seven more things to December would defeat the point. “We make suggestions, you make decisions!” Pick one or two that fit your season of life, and try them with your household, your family dinner, or your discipleship cohort. Many of them work best when decided before December fills up, so set aside some time to plan the month before it gets planned for you!

Seven Practices

Practice 1 — Choose Your Silence

When Zechariah couldn't receive good news at God's pace, God gave him nine quiet months to watch a promise grow. Pick one daily Advent rhythm, such as a devotional reading (see below), a kids' Advent calendar and paired readings, and protect 10-20 minutes a day for it. Use the weekly passage in the Alabaster Weekly as an anchor point.

Practice 2 — Make Phone-Free Space

Even when our bodies are still, our minds race, and our phone is usually where the race kicks off. Choose one phone-free block each day: the first hour of the morning, dinner, or the drive home. Charge phones outside the bedroom through December, and turn off shopping and news notifications for the season.

Practice 3 — Keep a Sabbath

Joseph didn't solve his crisis but rested, and God met him in his sleep. Set aside one day a week to stop, rest, delight, and worship. Sleep in, get doughnuts, take the dog for a walk, make it a no-shopping day, and consider a digital sabbath too. Our 4pm Sunday gathering is meant to fit inside a sabbath rhythm.

Practice 4 — Shop Early, Simply, Together

A Sabbath is hard to protect when the shopping is still undone. Make your gift list in November (or as early as possible) and finish most of it before mid-December. Shop once, together, instead of a dozen hurried trips. Consider buying local or buying less.

Practice 5 — Choose a Gift Philosophy

Mary sings that God fills the hungry with good things and sends the rich away empty. Too much muchness leaves us empty and joyless. Decide on purpose, as a household, how you'll give this year: fewer and better things, experiences over things, homemade gifts, or one shared family gift. Tell extended family early so expectations line up.

Practice 6 — Plan Acts of Joy

Joy shows up at the kitchen table and in the living room, not in a finished to-do list. Put one or two unhurried delights on the calendar, like baking, a feast, or a drive to see the lights, and start or revive a tradition your household will look forward to.

Practice 7 — Give the Gift of Presence, and Make the Season Last

Bethlehem was too busy to notice the most important birth in history. Skip an obligatory party and savor a dinner with close friends instead. Take vacation time if you can, and go phone-free as often as you can. Then make Christmas season last: keep the tree up, stretch the celebration into the new year, and stay in vacation mode as long as you can.

For Families with Kids

Kids don't need a more magical December. They need a slower one with you in it. The simplest way to unhurry as a family is one small rhythm at the dinner table each week: have the kids light some candles, read a short story, ask a few questions, and pray. If you’re just getting started, one slow dinner together will more than make the season special.

Each week of Advent, the Baton Pass, our Alabaster Kids take-home for parents, will carry that week's family practice and conversation prompts for the dinner table: what to read and what to talk about together. Look for it each Monday morning in the Alabaster Weekly.

The practices, family-sized

• Choose your silence. Light a candle at dinner and sit together in silence for one minute before you eat and talk. Little ones can try 30 seconds.

• Make it a screen-free season. Put the shows and tablets away for Advent and tell your kids why: "We're learning to wait." Then break the fast once a week for a classic Christmas movie night together, with snacks and pajamas.

• Count the days with a star and a calendar. Pair an Advent calendar (chocolates, LEGO, whatever your kids love) with a hide-and-seek star like The Star from Afar. Each morning the kids work together to find where the star is hiding, the way the wise men followed theirs, and only then do they open that day's calendar door. It turns waiting into something to look forward to, and the treat into a shared reward.

• Keep a Sabbath. Pick one no-errands day each weekend for pajama mornings, a long walk, a board game together, then come to our 4pm gathering rested.

• Shop early, simply, together. Make the gift list with your kids. Let each child choose and wrap one gift to give someone else.

• Choose a gift philosophy. Try something kids can understand, like "something you want, something you need, something to wear, something to read," or one shared family gift.

• Plan acts of joy. Bake cookies for neighbors, walk to see the lights, crank up the Christmas music for a dance party or let kids plan one Christmas tradition all their own.

• Give presence, and make it last. Say no to one party so you can have an ordinary night at home. Then keep celebrating through the twelve days of Christmas: leave the tree up until Epiphany on January 6, and save the wise men's story for that night.

Recommended Resources

If you'd like a companion for the season, here are a few we (Ryan & Erin) love. We recommend the first two as daily readings through December, the next two as approachable guides to Advent and the Christmas story, and the last two for those wanting to go deeper.

Waiting for Jesus, Rich Villodas offers twenty-five days of short reflections, December 1 through Christmas Day, each followed by a simple rhythm of silence, Scripture, wisdom from Christians through the ages, and self-reflection. Its four weeks move through waiting, peacemaking, rejoicing, and beholding.

Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas gathers daily readings from voices across the church's history and traditions, from Bonhoeffer to Merton to Madeleine L'Engle. Probably my (Ryan) favorite as each reading is short enough for your morning cup of coffee, and profound enough to return to year after year.

Advent: The Season of Hope, Tish Harrison Warren is a short, warm introduction to the season, exploring the three comings of Christ: in the incarnation, in our lives now, and at the end of the age. Part of her aim is to "make Christmas weird again." Erin’s personal favorite and a great place to start if Advent is new to you.

Rediscovering Christmas, AJ Sherrill retells the nativity story through its first-century Jewish setting, drawing on Sherrill's many years walking the Holy Land. It's divided into two parts, Advent as the season of waiting and Christmastide as the season of receiving, which makes it a rad companion for Practice 7's "make it last."

Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ, Fleming Rutledge collects sermons and essays that recover Advent as a season of waiting for Christ's return, not just a run-up to Christmas. Honest about darkness and judgment, and the most substantial contemporary book here. I bought it six years ago and each Advent dust it off and read a few sermons or essays over the month, I still haven’t finished it! “Advent begins in the dark.”

On the Incarnation, Athanasius is a fourth-century classic on why God became human, and still one of the clearest accounts of what Christmas actually means. Short, surprisingly readable, and best in an edition with C. S. Lewis's introduction (which is worth the price of admission) which famously encourages the reading old books.