"Put That Light Out!" (the meaning of Advent for Christians)

   Forget The X Factor final. Never mind BBC Sports Automaton of the Year. The biggest show of the year arrived on schedule and you didn’t need a TV licence or Simon Cowell to enjoy it. So after that Ryan Giggs moment, I took my glass of red wine, put on my Sad Person’s duffle coat and stood outside looking up at the night sky, in the hope of seeing shooting stars. For last night was the annual appearance of the Geminid meteor shower, a spectacular display of shooting stars which was supposed to be even better than usual this year because of a clear sky and a new moon. I needn’t have bothered. For me, there were no shooting stars. All that and a Manchester United player winning some trophy based on his non-existent personality and beating Liverpool for twenty years running was almost too much to bear. Who said God does not have a sense of humour?

  The Geminid meteors have a special place in my memory. In my first year at university, a mad astrophysics student, a beautiful but unattainable mathematics student, me and a large bottle of vodka legged it up Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh one night where we lay horizontal until the vodka was finished observing an amazing display of shooting stars. December 1974, it was, and I don’t remember much about the next day apart from a headache and failing the organic chemistry exam. (The astrophysics student failed too but went on to become moderately famous.)  So when the newspapers on Saturday reminded me of this forthcoming annual celestial fireworks display, I thought I would give it one more go, but this time without the vodka.

  The problem was I didn’t read the small print. I’m too gullible. Easily led. If The Daily Rant proclaimed that Liverpool would beat Arsenal 6-0 and go on to win the Premier League, I would believe it. What the small print said was that “the meteor shower is best observed as far away from street lights as possible.” Are you kidding? My neighbour has the sort of Christmas lights that must be powered by Sizewell B nuclear power station. Another neighbour’s house has an outside light that could pick out a jumbo jet at 30,000 feet. Conwy Council must have spent the annual budget of a large African nation on its illuminated Welsh dragons, leaving Penmaenmwr bathed in neon all night. What I should have done was to drive to Snowdon and climb up 3,000 feet in the dark without even a torch, but that might have left me seeing angels and not shooting stars.

  Light pollution is everywhere. The sky is just not dark any more. Coming back from Asia recently (yes, I know, I have a carbon footprint the size of Kent), the satellite map tracking the flight route showed a continent at night lit up by a billion man-made stars: the lights of our city streets, towns, motorways, factories and those giant plastic snowmen you just long to blow up. We have lost the darkness of December.

 Advent (yes, there is a Christian message this week) is all about searching the darkness. Advent, the  four weeks leading up to Christmas that mark the start of the Christian year, is about waiting for what Christians call the Light of the World – Jesus. He will come, as predictable as the orbit of a meteor, God in nappy-wet flesh gatecrashing our broken world on December 25^th. Christ will come and Christ will come again. But not yet. And it is that not yet that Advent celebrates: a time of waiting and preparation, a time of searching the skies (and our souls) for glimmers of light. A time too, as the prayer I just quoted tells us, of remembering that biblical prophets, and Jesus himself, warn us that next time around - for Christians believe this Jesus, the Son of God, will come again in power and glory to judge the world, for all to see – things will not be so cute. The Second Advent will be both terrifying and utterly unpredictable in its timing. Beware of riding the comet’s tail.

  But somehow we have lost Advent too, just as we have lost the darkness. Christmas has been lighting up our streets, our shops, our lives for over a month. It is difficult to talk of darkness and waiting when wee Jimmy has already appeared as the third sheep on the left in your school nativity play two weeks ago and is now demanding his Easter egg. And how we need the darkness to see things properly! How we need the dark nights of waiting to pick out all the more the joy and peace of Christ! So remember, Christmas has not started yet. Not in this house anyway. As the ARP warden, Hodges, used to say in Dad’s Army, “Put that light out!” We will celebrate the coming of the Saviour of the world – but not yet. For now, let us embrace the darkness: what’s left of it, that is.