I’m a Good Anglican. I’m celebrating ADVENT.

I am. Really.

I am a good Anglican.  I really am.  So I am now observing Advent — Advent, I say!  No Merry Christmas or Happy (Generic Winter) Holidays for me!  With a rightfully superior attitude, I’ve been ignoring The Andy Williams Christmas blaring at me at the grocery store for weeks now. It was still Trinity Season then, and it’s ADVENT now!

I even snootily ignored Black Friday . . . except only to go into a Total Wine only to get my yearly ration of Goose Island Bourbon County stouts being released that morning.  One must make sacrifices to take care of the necessities.  Let the Big Bad Baptists (Hmm, should I get that stout, too?) and others who do not revere the Calendar of Holy Church run roughshod over each other for deals . . . although I did get into a short line and then walked at dignified brisk pace to be sure I got my stouts.  It is un-Anglican not to have necessary alcohol on hand, don’t you know.

Now, yes, I do already have my Chr— Advent tree up but only with restrained, tasteful decoration for now. Really. I am listening to carols, yes, but from two old Advent service CDs from King’s and St. John’s College Cambridge.   Well maybe I’ve also begun listening to my quieter holy day CDs . . . that maybe have some Christmas carols on them.  Hey, Advent CDs are hard to come by.

Speaking of music, Christmas does not begin until the lone chorister starts singing “Once in Royal David’s City” in the Chapel of King’s College Cambridge at the beginning of their Nine Lessons and Carols service on Christmas Eve, and don’t you forget it.  Never mind that I might listen to my King’s Nine Lessons and Carols CDs (Yes, I have several.) slightly before the day.

So Christmas excess for me? No! Not until Christmas Eve!… Well I did have some egg nog the other night, but that was for sampling purposes only.  Those Episcopalians buy up all the good egg nog early — yes, I know there aren’t many Episcopalians left, but they still drink the liquor stores dry of the good stuff. So I have to find out early which brands of egg nog and other necessities to buy this year, don’t you know.

Now on December 6th, I may (okay, I will) allow myself to get slightly more Christmasy.  That is St. Nicholas’ Day after all.  So I will put up more festive decorations on the tree.  I will allow myself to listen to my Christmasy Christmas CDs.  I will . . . .

Okay.  Yes, I confess.  By St. Nicholas Day, I will become a Bad Anglican already less than halfway through Advent and celebrate Christmas like a retailer on the day after Halloween.  I become ashamed just thinking about what I know will happen.

Before you can say “Gaudete Sunday” I will be drinking more and more varieties of egg nog and Christmas ales, too.  My — okay I admit it — my premature CHRISTMAS tree will have more decorations than limbs.  It is an artificial tree but my place will still reek of Christmas from all the candles I will be burning.  That’s not all that might be burning.  I will soon — heck, now already — have so many Christmas lights up that the power company and Greta are watching me.  I might even be playing that Andy Williams Christmas Album:  “It’s the hap-happiest time of the year, ding dong.”

And all long before Christmas Eve.  I would say I am as patient about Christmas as a five-year-old boy, but that is not giving most five-year-old boys enough credit.

Well, Advent is a season of penitence, or at least it still is with my pious Anglo-Catholic friends.  God bless them for being stubborn about it.  Maybe I should ask them since they always know about such things: Is it permitted to be penitent for sins I know I will commit in the coming days? “We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; And we have done those things which we ought not to have done; And there is too much early Christmas in us.”

I know that would be a questionable innovation (All innovations are questionable.), but will the Lord and Anglo-Catholics let me get away with it just this once? . . . And during Advent next year, and . . .?

Anyway, I hope when Christmas finally does come that the Baby Jesus — who is a Good Anglican, of course — doesn’t throw something at me.