I found Adam McHugh's reflections on Advent very interesting, largely because they are in many ways the opposite of mine. Advent was never a time of stress, rush, or noise for me. In fact, I love Advent and rejoice in it because it seems like an annual "reset": a pause in the tumbling rush of time to refresh, recharge, and remember.

The experiences of our earliest years stay with us for a lifetime. Where Adam McHugh felt alienated by a busy Advent that seemed to be the province of extroverts, I felt a sense of quiescent participation in a timeless ritual bigger than myself. Advent, unlike most other things in life, was not a weight on my shoulders. It had a magic that did not depend on me.

We are, in our generations, the guests of Advent: we visit it during our time on earth, and bring away from it our separate memories. Mine are of candlelight, Advent wreaths, brothers and sisters, mother and father, cold starry nights, frost on windowpanes, soaring choirs and Advent hymns, organs and trumpets, and people in coats and boots greeting each other in garland-draped vestibules with hugs, handshakes, and smiles. The Christmas story, the idea of a hush falling over the earth, of the very stars colluding to announce the coming of the promised one, and of all creation, seen and unseen, known and unknown, waiting expectantly for the birth of one small boy -- these wonders never grow old, and Advent is our appointed time to remember and savor them.

For me, Advent is integral to memories of family and childhood. We observed Advent as a family by lighting the candles on our wreath at dinner each evening, singing hymns, and reading the passages of scripture indicated by the old Episcopal prayer book. Decorating the wreath at the beginning of Advent was the children's task. We children rotated the scripture readings at the dinner table. We learned to read music as vocalists, and to sing in parts, largely from Dad's direction in our family Advent ceremonies. The old Hymnal 1940 was our companion and guide.

The 1960s and 1970s raged around my childhood, but in the landscape of my memory some of the most prominent features are the balance and inner quiet of ritual and tradition. Advent was a big part of that.  It represented the continuous run of peaceful specialness between Thanksgiving -- long my mother's favorite holiday -- and Christmas Day. It had sights, sounds, smells, ceremonies, and silences all its own.

And the silences were important. They paced the season and anchored it. One of the best-loved lines of scripture is from Luke's account of the Christmas story: Luke 2:19, which says that Mary "treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart." I have always associated this treasuring and pondering with the season of Advent. When I was a small child the pondering didn't last long; it took place when I lay for a moment next to the Christmas tree, looking for my reflection in the ornaments. Growing older, I would do my treasuring and pondering in the quiet time after finishing a semester exam, or sitting dispiritedly before a football game when things weren't going my team's way. (Football, I should mention, was a really fun part of Advent.  I am, after all, from Oklahoma.)

The treasuring and pondering have gone with me through time and across continents, from being at sea during Advent to being stationed overseas, and from standing watch and worrying about Soviet ballistic-missile submarines to manning the office alone on an Advent afternoon, wrestling with personnel problems and fleet readiness issues. The sense has remained with me that problems and situations come and go, but the treasuring and pondering -- affirmed with ceremony in a season of their own -- outlast them.