Be Prepared is the motto that many of us memorized growing up, later turning into a marketing tagline of “Prepare. For Life.” Preparation is the prudent act of an adult, foreseeing some future event and taking positive steps to be ready for when they arrive. That is Advent, the changing of our physical environments and interior selves to be ready for the arrival of the foretold Savior.

Jesus’ arrival was not a surprise. For hundreds of years, the place of His arrival was told and retold in Israel. This promised Savior would be the fulfillment of all of God’s promises in the story, reaching back to Abraham in the desert of the Nineveh plains. Long waiting, long-suffering, Israel pined for this arrival and the new era that it would begin.

We enter the Christmas season each year with a sense of time compression and busyness. The Halloween-Thanksgiving-Christmas-New Year sequence in rapid succession seems to speed us up. All the things we hoped to accomplish in 2025 take on new urgency and, while most of those things will be pushed into 2026, we still try to get it all done.

This compression is the opposite of the intent of Thanksgiving and Christmas. These two holidays ask us, instead, to pause. In Thanksgiving, we partake in the national pastime of practicing gratitude. This is a uniquely American trait in our national DNA that acknowledges that our successes and blessings find their source in others and in God. It’s a day to reflect on how good our lives are, and though life is never easy, there is much to be grateful for.

Christmas marks the arrival of Christ, and the dawn of an era. Reaching its fulfillment at Easter when we are truly set free, His birth is a concrete event that tells us that it was all real. Every story, every poem, every song, it all pointed to this moment, to this event, and now it is happening.

There are many preparations ahead in the short four weeks before Christmas. We need to decorate our homes; a change in the physical space that we inhabit gives us frequent reminders of the importance of these days. We need to clean our conscience by going to Reconciliation so that we are ready to participate in the celebrations to the fullest without being attached to our failings. Finally, we should contemplate the depth and beauty of this mystery. The great I AM arrives in the form that we ourselves entered into this world, and with Him comes everything we’ve hoped for and everything that was promised.

It all was true, it is all real, and we are a part of it.