Over the past couple weeks as I've been pondering Advent, I keep being reminded of this video I once saw about the famous "marshmallow experiment."  Basically, some psychologists wanted to test self-discipline in children, so they left kids in a room for 15 minutes with a marshmallow and a simple proposition: they could eat the marshmallow, or wait until the adult came back when they would get TWO marshmallows.  In other words, if the kids are willing to engage a little self-denial in the short term, they get a bigger pay-off in the long term.

The results are entertaining, to say the least:

My favorites are the kids who sit there fondling and smelling the marshmallows, as if that's almost as good as eating it!

I think there's actually a lot we can learn from this little marshmallow test when it comes to this current season of Advent.  We are in a period of waiting.  We can (often literally) smell Christmas coming around the corner, just like those kids taking in the scent of the marshmallow in front of them.  More importantly, we also have a deal offered to us by cycle of the church year, if we choose to accept it.  As we plow through mid-December, we can jump in to the celebration of Christmas and be disgusted with the whole phenomenon by boxing day.  Or we can hold off on "Christmas" just a little bit longer and treat Christmas Day as what it is--not the end of a hectic holiday season but the beginning of whole new season of Christian celebration.

All around us--everywhere we go--the world is pressuring us to rush in to the celebration of Christmas.  The lure of Christmas movies and holiday-themed beverages at Starbucks (a particular weakness of mine, I must confess) makes it increasingly difficult for us to hold off the celebration of Christmas and to take the time to embrace this rich and wonderful Advent season.  But embracing Advent and holding off on Christmas--just a little bit long--is so worth doing.

I find often, we don't really get a clear sense in our society of when the Christmas season really begins.  We just kind of wake up one day and realize Christmas snuck up on us.  Like those kids in the video, we pick and nibble away at the Christmas marshmallow in front of us, and only then realize that it's gone.  We don't get our second marshmallow, and we didn't really enjoy the first one.

I'd challenge us all to find some small ways to hold off on Christmas and to make more room for these last couple weeks of Advent.  Maybe that means putting off your favorite family Christmas movies for boxing week.  Maybe that means having some special decorations that don't go up until December 24. Or totally confuse all your non-church friends and throw a "12 Days of Christmas Party" the first week of January.  Something as simple as that can go a long way to bringing our private family celebrations of Christmas into synch with the church. Helping us remember that the joy and the feasting of this season really is about the Good News of Christ's presence coming into our world.  And in more mundane terms, by giving ourselves Advent as a season of preparation, it might help us reclaim Christmas as a season we look forward to--a season we have the time to savor and enjoy.

So go on--hold out for that extra marshmallow, hard as it may be!