Rev. Emelia Attridge

My great-grandmother loved Christmas. I think I've inherited a love of Christmas from my mother (who inherited it from her grandmother). When I would visit great-grandma's apartment as a kid it was like walking into a winter wonderland with Santas moving mechanically in their workshops and Filene's Basement gadgets with buttons to unleash fun sound effects and songs. 

Christmas is perhaps one of few holidays where you take out the decorations and you find yourself immersed in anamnesis: remembering. Trimming the hearth becomes an exercise of love and memory. Each garland, candle, and knick-knack serves a purpose: it made you smile, it smells delicious, it feels soft, it was passed down to you. 

In an age of minimalism and getting rid of our "stuff," let's not forget that sometimes providing hospitality also means letting people into your world, too. To open your home is to be a little vulnerable. To walk into someone else's space is intimate. If the incarnation is anything, its embodiment and matter. So, if you enter my apartment this Advent, you'll find material things set carefully and thoughtfully, both because they bring me joy, and because I hope the love embedded in them will rub off on you, too.