A Time of Preparation

The following is a reflection written by Jen Patton, one of this year's South House Volunteers.

Advent is a time for preparation. All over the world people are preparing for Christmas. Maybe that means they are making travel plans or Christmas shopping for all the people on their list. It can often be easy to forget that Advent asks us to prepare for the most important part of Christmas, the birth of Jesus Christ.

As a teacher, preparing for Christmas also means putting on a Christmas program here at St. Dorothy School. Talk about hustle and bustle! Coordinating 200 students and teachers can be quite a task. There are performances by each grade, nativity plays, costume changes, and liturgical dance numbers to consider. We rehearse as a school only a couple of times, which means many teachers are singing Christmas carols during math class. Details are fretted over as our school works to put on a show which parents and friends will never forget! All of these preparations are important. The church looks beautiful and students are proud to show their families what they practiced.

The Christmas program for St. Dorothy School was a big success this year. It seems to me that Christmas programs are just like Advent. There is a lot of preparation involved and it can be easy to get lost in the details, even if they are important. But we have to stay focused on the reason for the celebrations. Our Christmas program exists so that our students can show everyone how talented they are and how hard they work. It exists so that when a student messes up a line during the Christmas play, we can laugh with him because he tried so hard. It exists to show our students how much we believe in them and to marvel with them at the talents and gifts they have been given by God. And there were many reasons to marvel: our 59 liturgical dancers who performed four times, our 4^th grade soloist who sang “Mary, Did You Know” and literally brought the entire audience to their feet, our students singing Gospel songs about the birth of Jesus and a Christmas play by our elementary students.

As a preschool teacher, I marveled at my students singing with every ounce of energy they had in their little 3 and 4-year old bodies. One of my students, while he was singing his heart out, gave us the thumbs up in the middle of the performance. It brought a huge smile to my face to see how happy he was with his classmates. Remembering that my students are the most important part of any Christmas program helped me to remember what is really important during this Advent season: another child who was born to bring joy to our hearts and smiles to our faces despite all of life’s busy-ness.