Advent

 

I open the little cardboard door and enter into the end of the world depicted there on the backing sheet of my [advent] calendar. Calendars do not rate much at the end of the world, anymore than all pictures ever contrived to illustrate that day, the day to end all days. The artist has done a reasonable job, given no-one knows exactly what the end of the word looks like. Others would have done it differently, but given the artist’s available materials, accumulated knowledge, and general time period, there is no escaping the overall effect of 4 square centimetres. My eyes do not deceive me. Still, the little cardboard door keeps trying to close again so I must crease it hard at the edge to keep the door open. All told, there are 24. It is a day about which no one speaks lightly, though plenty try. Digressions on paper, specks of pixels in a digital abyss, count for nothing much. That is clear as I peer through the square doorway into the end of the world. My cliched preconceptions of heaven and hell are decisively displaced at such a moment. It would be prevarication to say I didn’t see this coming. No quantity of edifying sermons or B-grade movies prepared me for this unexpected expectation. Instead of a figgy pudding or a canister of myrrh, this door is a judgement. Judgement’s one word for it, at least. Everything is become a backward in time that my collective experience has thus far suppressed, dismissed, lived with thanks to endless distractions and agonisings. So much for endless distractions! My being is counting up furiously not just what I did, but didn’t do. I suppose there had been warnings attached to the calendar which is, after all, called an advent calendar. The front image is an impressive simulacrum of the world as I know it so well: the sun rises over fountainous trees and bounteous cities and mountainous complexities. It is a picture perfect image of this morning in December, in fact, just as usual. Even the address matches. If I could break the spell the calendar’s front image enables, I would find myself very exactly on this present day in time, writing down words in a notebook. Like everyone else, the end of the world occurs for me in my own backyard, where I am now. It is a personal revelation that cannot be resisted. As it happens, I notice the folly in monetizing the end of the world. There has been a huge rise in the market for these advent calendars. People don’t seem to get enough, everyone seems to be in need of their very own copy. Not In My Back Yard Inc. offers an extensive range, each with its own personalised worldview and immediate reality. It’s childhood all over again, playing peekaboo each day with cardboard doors opening up on a scene of shepherds abiding at night tending their flocks, witnessing the glory and message of angels, and terrified out of their wits.