Advent 2022 - Fast Forward

It's that time of year again when the days can feel heavy-going. Christmas is not far off but not here yet and the worries and uncertainties of 2022 seem to loom oppressively, especially in the fading light of darkening November afternoons. Light levels drop rapidly in November every year in the UK which always exerts a melancholy aspect to the season but somehow, this year, it's affected me more and I've been thinking about how to combat it.  

It's made me think about revisiting the original ethos of Advent. In the Christian tradition, Advent, like Lent, was always a penitential season, a time of abstinence and reflection. Forget Christmas parties, light-up Santas and inflatable snowmen bobbing in your front garden, chocolate Advent calendars and any other frivolous indulgences throughout the first part of December  - Advent was a time for fasting and thinking about what were ominously referred to as the 'Four Last Things'. 

These were matters hardly calculated to diminish November gloom, I'm afraid, as the 'Four Last Things' are heaven, hell, death and judgment - not subjects, at first glance, calculated to inspire cheer and lift feelings of melancholy but the idea was to provide a contrast in lifestyle and tone with the celebration and festivities of Christmas that followed. Fasting before feasting has a lot to recommend  it. Not that that's unique to Christianity, by any means - it's a strong feature in Judaism, Islam and other religions. And in the past, regardless of religious belief, it was also a purely pragmatic necessity in winter, in the northern hemisphere because of limited food supplies during the non-growing season. If you wanted to celebrate and feast in style in the middle of winter, you literally had to forego eating too much into your supplies beforehand because once they were gone, they were gone. 

For our ancestors, it was a recurring rhythm to life and I feel their celebrations may well have had the edge on our 21st C ones. Don't get me wrong, I am deeply grateful that modern infrastructure provides a level of constancy to food supply that our ancestors would have given their eye teeth for, but I still feel there is something we've lost in abandoning that ancient pattern of living. Increasingly, I notice, health advice also  sings the praises of periodic or intermittent fasting. Temporary or permanent abstinence from alcohol to give the liver a respite, longer fasting periods between meals to rest the whole digestive tract as well as cutting back particular foods such as sugar, animal products etc for assorted health benefits have all seen much greater support in recent years than before. 

As a child, I grew up in a household that very much waited for Christmas before celebrating it. We never observed any kind of obvious fasting nor, I am pleased to say, did we spend our time considering the 'Four Last Things', but we never put up Christmas decorations before Christmas Eve and Advent calendars were simple, two-dimensional, cardboard affairs with paper doors that we opened each day to reveal small pictures, nothing more indulgent. There was an enchanting, if unsophisticated, sense of excitement and anticipation in the household, not just for my sister and myself as children, but also for adults, something that celebrating Christmas too early cuts across big time. 

The idea of a treat-laden Advent calendar that gave you a goodie for each day of Advent or indulging in any Christmas excesses before Christmas was unthinkable. Advent was about looking forward to Christmas not celebrating it in advance. And when Christmas came, it was joyous - not just Christmas Day itself but the days afterwards, the traditional 'Twelve Days of Christmas' which were every bit as good, if quieter, than Christmas Day itself. In fact it's probably the idyllic nature of those post-Christmas days that I miss the most - they had a magical quality all their own. No one was bored or fed up with Christmas by Boxing Day, as is often the case today, inevitably so, if the celebrations have already been running for a month or more beforehand. 

The 'Twelve Days' were a halcyon period of blissfully relishing the novelty of Christmas food - sumptuous leftovers and all the things that had been saved up for Christmas, of winter walks, of spending hours engrossed in reading one of the new books I'd got in my stocking or under the tree, oblivious to the outside world, of savouring the new, and as yet still fresh, feel of the house decorated for Christmas. They were truly days that were balm to the spirit both for adults and children. Why on earth would one swap that for spending Boxing Day fighting queues in 'The Sales' and a few days later, if that, clearing up every sign that Christmas had ever passed by? No wonder we find January a long and miserable month. Because, of course, if you celebrate the Twelve Days of Christmas as they were originally intended to be celebrated, January is effectively shortened by a whole week - good news for anyone who finds January tedious, dreary and cash-strapped. 

All of which brings me to thinking about reclaiming an old-style fasting Advent this year. So I've come up with an Advent calendar with a difference. Instead of a charming picture, a chocolate, miniature bottle of gin, or any other indulgence, (and have a look here for some of the mind-bogglingly expensive, treat-laden Advent calendars available for 2022), behind each door is a challenge to go without something. My challenges are cooking and food-related but you could easily rework the idea to cover other themes. There is some repetition but also quite a bit of variety which hopefully will make it something that I can fit the rest of life around without disrupting things excessively or imposing on others to an unwelcome degree. 

I shall not be considering the 'Four Last Things' per se, I'm afraid - the news is too miserable and depressing without adding to the general gloom by dwelling excessively on my own mortality - but I suspect the challenges in a modest way will certainly make me think about and be grateful for what I often take for granted which seems an appropriate preparation for the Feast of Christmasse. 

2022 may have been (and still is) for many of us a difficult year. There are many reasons to feel despairing and wistful as the dying year wanes to its close but there is also much to be grateful for.  Even thinking and planning this, I notice, has raised in me an increased happy sense of anticipation for Christmas and lifted the gloom. 

I've therefore made my own Advent calendar out of some old monoprint experiments that I did a few years back. I glued them together to make one large piece and got D to cut 25 little doors in it, behind which, instead of jolly pictures or anything more substantial and indulgent, I added little black and white icons that represent a particular fasting challenge for each day. 

I had wondered about making my own rubber stamps for these icons but quickly realised that much of the detail of these kinds of images is not compatible with being turned into a stamp so I've used free clip art images I found via Google and added a circle and a bar across to indicate what is off limits. 

I came up with eleven different fasting challenges with the intention that some are repeated more than once over the four weeks and there is an extra icon for feasting on Christmas Day.

Reading the rows in the image below from left to right the challenges represented are as follows:

Fast from... using the dishwasher.

Fast from... sugar, including honey, jam, syrup, chocolate etc but not the sugars found as natural components in foods such as fruit.

Fast from... using the oven, including the microwave.

Fast from... any kind of commercially highly processed food - it's difficult to be absolutely rigorous about this as pretty well any foodstuff one buys has been 'processed' in some fashion but basically anything that has had any significant ingredient(s) added or has been subjected to anything more than the most rudimentary preparation is off limits so no ready-meals and no commercially prepared, composite foods are allowed but basic, plain ingredients such as milk, milled cereals, sugar, raw meat, raw fish, eggs, fresh fruit and vegetables etc are fine as is homemade processing of said basic ingredients in preparation for eating.

Fast from... wheat, including spelt, but allowing other cereals and grains such as oats, rye, buckwheat, barley and rice.

Fast from... oils and fats - butter, any type of oil, low-fat spread, margarine, lard etc. Fat that is integral to a food such as in lean meat, eggs or nuts is allowed (within reason) but nothing that you would categorise as a particularly high fat food such as bacon or roast chicken skin.

Fast from... dairy products - butter, yoghurt, milk, cheese, cream etc

Fast from...  anything that has been imported from abroad. Here in the UK that means eliminating virtually all spices, coffee, Indian or China tea, most beans and pulses including soya, most oils, fruit and vegetables grown abroad, rice, chocolate, cane sugar, many cheeses, some meat and quite a lot of fish. Any UK grown, reared or produced foods are fine, whether or not they've been processed, so it's a question of checking labels for country of origin to see what's permitted. Annoyingly, quite a lot of foods are labelled 'packed in the UK' which is not good enough. To be allowed, the item (and / or its ingredients) must actually have been produced in the UK. 

Fast from... anything out of season. I had some difficulty thinking of a suitable image to denote 'in season' and decided on the cherries as British cherries are so seasonal - only available for a short window in the summer. What is allowed under this heading will depend a bit on where you live. In the UK it means primarily eating seasonal root and green vegetables, dried beans and pulses, dried fruit supplemented by some fresh fruit, nuts, fish (including shellfish), meat and game, mature cheese, grains and cereals and avoiding anything whose natural eating season is say, July, such as summer fruits and salads. In the past, eggs and dairy products were less plentiful during the winter so I shall try not to major too much on these.

Fast from... all animal products - meat, fish, dairy products, honey etc - days with this icon are strictly vegan ones. 

Fast from... one meal of your choosing out of your normal daily routine.

Feast on... anything you choose as you celebrate Christmas,  including, but not limited to, Christmas pudding!

If you'd like to use the same images to do something similar yourself, you can print a pdf of these ones from here. The pdf contains one copy of each image so you'll need to print several copies and then select and cut out the images you want to repeat more or less of. 

My intention is to post updates here through Advent with any musings I have and my menu ideas for each fasting category, to help me feel accountable and in case anyone is interested, or perhaps feels they'd like to join in. 

E x