Fox News' Martha MacCallum on Advent and anticipating Christ's birth
The real joy of Christmas comes alive in this grace-filled perspective on the holiday season: Let's keep its 'true meaning' in focus, MacCallum says
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"I have always loved Christmas," says Fox News' Martha MacCallum, anchor and executive editor of "The Story with Martha MacCallum," in a thoughtful essay featured in the new book, All American Christmas by Rachel Campos-Duffy and Sean Duffy.
For MacCallum, Christmas is much more about "the baby and the manger" than it is about "the packages in my arms and the list in my pocket" — and she details why such a faithful focus throughout the Christmas season is so important.
"Keeping that true meaning [as] the focus," she says, "influences the sort of traditions I've embraced around celebrating Christmas."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}TRUE MEANING OF CHRISTMAS AND THE JOY OF FAITH
She calls special attention to Advent and the prayerful, joyful preparation during this liturgical period before the birth of Jesus Christ on Christmas Day.
Today, on the third Sunday of Advent this year — Dec. 12, 2021 — here's a slice of MacCallum's life during the holiday season as she and so many millions of others look ahead with great anticipation to Christmas Day.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Read Martha MacCallum's grace-filled thoughts on Advent as we prepare for Christmas
Martha MacCallum in All American Christmas: For me, Christmas begins not with store decorations that seem to nudge Halloween off the shelves these days, or the Black Friday sales, but on the first Sunday of Advent [Nov. 28 this year]. That is "go" day for the season in our house.
We put a fresh green wreath on the dinner table with three purple candles and one pink, light the first one, and say an Advent prayer.
Each year I buy old-school German Advent calendars and send a few to family members or the kids at college and keep one for our kitchen.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}A beautiful Advent wreath with candles is shown here, much like the one MacCallum and her family keep on their own dinner table. Christmas is just two weeks away. (iStock)
I still delight in opening the little windows [of the Advent calendar] and the way that it paces the season, keeping each day special. Those larger doors with the "24" on them hold the magic of Christmas Eve.
A few years ago, in a nod to the omnipresence of social media in everyone's lives, I started to post an Advent calendar.
CHRISTMAS AND WHAT IT REALLY MEANS: TIPS FOR KEEPING US ROOTED IN FAITH
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Each day I look for something that reminds me that we are "waiting," that everyone is preparing by decorating and shopping and wrapping and singing and praying and that all these things light the candle of what's to come in our hearts as we anticipate the birth of Christ.
The Rockefeller Center tree going up just after Thanksgiving, a child looking in the window of FAO Schwarz, a drippy iced gingerbread house, an angel on my tree, the wreaths that line St. Patrick's Cathedral, the empty manger bed in the creche there, waiting for the baby Jesus — all of these are photos that I stop to take.
MacCallum, anchor and executive editor of Fox News' "The Story," values Advent and all that it signifies for Christians. Her essay appears along with many other essays — as well as photos, recipes, playlists, and more — in ‘All American Christmas.’
They make me appreciate the day, the effort that goes into all of these Christmas things, and the reason for it all.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Sometimes I post a prayer, like the Christmas novena, which my mother-in-law always said at the table on Christmas Eve. [It's] a tradition we have kept going.
In our home, I put out my collection of creches. One small one was made with wood from the Holy Land; another one so tiny you can hold it in your hand is made in Colombia from a matchbox. It's painted with bright and beautiful colors.
A beautiful Christmas manger scene features figurines representing Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the Three Wise Men, and more. In MacCallum's home, she and her family keep the baby Jesus "in a secret hiding place until after midnight on Christmas Eve," she writes. (File)
The one my mom bought for us when we were married is from Italy, with beautiful carved figures.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}We keep Jesus in a secret hiding place until after midnight on Christmas Eve.
There is a beautiful drama to the Christmas story. The shepherds keeping watch, the Wise Men on their way, believing what the prophets foretold. The ability of Mary, a young woman, to have such faith, that God was with her.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}As Amy Grant sings in one of my favorite newer carols, and the only one I know that speaks in the voice of Mary, "Breath of Heaven," "Holy Father you have come, and chosen me now to carry your son."
Excerpted from the new book All American Christmas by Rachel Campos-Duffy and Sean Duffy. To purchase a copy, click here.