On the grounds of a church I pass daily is a sign reading, Finding Christmas. I didn’t know it was lost. But then I wouldn’t because I’m an Episcopalian. We don’t lose major feast days. Also, we have Advent.


Advent is a four-week lead-up to Christmas complete with an Advent wreath. It has four candles, and we light one each week so we can stay on track. For a gazillion years the candles were purple. A couple of years ago, Mother Church decided for some arcane reason to change the liturgical color of the season of Advent from purple to blue. And yes, we do have colors. That’s how we know what season we’re in and why we don’t lose things like Christmas.

Changing the Advent color from purple to blue is worse than daylight savings time. I tried. I really did. The first year was an exercise in frustration because you can’t find robin’s egg blue candles in the winter or any other time of the year for that matter. The second year I had the robin’s egg blue candles. I got the wreath all decked out and it looked like a damn nest for the Easter Bunny.

This year I unpacked the purple candles. It looked like Advent again and that’s why I didn’t lose Christmas.

Some things were not meant to be trifled with.