Advent is a Time of Hope in the Darkness
I wonder if one reason so many people experience 'holiday blues' is that the culturally dominant holiday calendar is all feasts and no fasts. Even funerals, in the US today, have often been entirely replaced by 'celebrations of life'—an attempt to chase away the sadness, rather than experience it. Historically, Advent was a season for fasting when Christians might mourn for the broken state of the world and pray for Christ to come quickly to set all things to right. Today, many churches (at least the American Protestant ones with which I'm most familiar) begin singing festive Christmas hymns from...
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