In Defense of November

I get the impression that the seasonal conditions around this time of year aren’t terribly popular. Late November up through December is a bit awkward like that. I’d like to change your mind in this little column, if I can.

Now, let me be clear about a few things: When I speak of this time of year, I don’t mean the holidays, or the traveling, or the fuzzy clothes people seem to be fond of wearing.

I also don’t mean pretty snowfall, skiing, snowball fights, or whatever other activities come to mind that are more typical of January or February.

When I speak of November, or of this darkening time of the year in general, think instead of the bleak dawn, the bare and leafless day when the trees offer little resistance to the air and the wind howls through the streets and whips along the Reservoir, when the air freezes your fingers and you’re constantly thinking about the next warm place you can stop in.

It’s cold, but without that one wonderful consolation, the precious and jeweled cloak of snow. Frigid, but not jolly, for I have already excluded the warm coziness which, let’s face it, is mostly in defiance of the season itself, not really part of it. Most people probably don’t like being out in it for very long. I commonly overhear people complaining about the cold, the shorter days, the deadness of the world.

I disagree with those complaints. Why? Precisely because the world is made quiet and bare. Unnervingly so? Maybe it should be. We confront the harsh reality of how passing this world’s beauty is. “Long lay the world in sin and error pining,” as the line goes, and as we are led to ponder when we face this late autumn and winter.

Yet we aren’t left without hope either. For as you read this, the great season of Advent is also upon us. The world is dying, but it’s somehow also charged. It’s waiting for something, but it knows not what. Pay attention to this mood, for it is eminently meaningful: As once it awaited the Incarnation, it still awaits Christ’s second coming.

This time of the year, as the day darkens and deadens, physically reminds us of our need to keep watch, to cleanse ourselves, to prepare ourselves to worthily receive its Redeemer. The world puts on an air of austerity and a posture of readiness and attention. That is why it is supremely fitting that Advent should coincide with it.

I urge you, reader, not to seek refuge in our culture’s usual habits of escaping the cold, staying inside all the time, and playing Christmas music. It’s not Christmas; it’s not yet the time to feast and celebrate. Right now is the time for each of us to face our waywardness and sinfulness, and the outside world right now is the perfect setting to do so.

Make time to go for a walk, a long one if you can. Think carefully about the leafless trees you pass by, the chill that steals the warmth from your limbs, the sun that sets so achingly early. This world awaits a new spring, but first it has to go through this bitter season. You also are waiting for something, and you too will have to endure much before you can attain it. Learn from the seasons God has given you, both winter and Advent. Learn how to wait patiently and keep watch.