Here in this third week of Advent, we see the lights of a false dawn that comes before the true light of Christmas. Everywhere you go, you see houses with their Christmas lights on and their Christmas decorations out. In the stores and on the radio you hear Christmas music following you around. Everyone has become so used to thinking of these weeks after Thanksgiving as "The Christmas Season" that by the time Christmas actually comes around, they are already sick of it.

What will happen once the Christmas season actually starts on Christmas day? There will be a day, maybe two, of brilliant celebration, and then everything will go dark again. On the third day of Christmas, what do I expect to see? Thrown-away Christmas trees. The lights will be taken down, the decorations packed away, the songs silenced, and the season will be forgotten.

Try this: on December 28th, wish someone a "Merry Christmas". He will look at you like you just sprouted a set of antlers. Christmas? That's over! It finished up once we unwrapped the gifts, had the big dinner, and went to bed all glowing with warm feeling. The day after Christmas? That's the day to start packing it all away.

How sad. We've taken the season of Advent, a wonderful, quiet time of contemplation, a time of preparation for both the celebration of the Incarnation and the reality of the Second Coming, and made it the season we anticipate. We've moved Christmas so far forward that we say it starts at Thanksgiving. The Christmas season itself is largely forgotten. We bathe ourselves in the glow of a false dawn, and then don't see the sun once it has risen.

I think we should steal adapt another idea from our Jewish brethren: the Menorah. The eight candles of the Menorah clearly delineate the passing of days from the beginning to the end of Chanukah. Christmas is an eight-day feast, a fact we might remember a little better if we had a ritual for each day.

Come to think of it, we already do something like this with the Advent wreath, so maybe we could adapt that for the celebration of Christmas. How about making an Advent/Christmas wreath with eight candle-holders? Four would be left empty and covered up during Advent. Then, on Christmas Day, the Advent candles are removed and replaced by eight white Christmas candles. Each day, the family has a short ritual like they do during Advent, and the proper number of candles get lit, until all are lit on the solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God.

In my house, we have two advent wreaths that we haven't been able to find since we moved. Maybe I'll be able to find them before Christmas and put them to use during the Octave of Christmas. There's no reason we can't have both the light of anticipation in Advent and the glorious light of revelation during Christmas.