The decorations go up before the Thanksgiving leftovers are cold. The countdown to gifts starts before anyone has slowed down enough to ask what they are actually waiting for. The hosts of Truth’s Table, Ekemini Uwan, Dr. Christina Edmondson and Michelle Higgins, want you to stop sprinting toward Christmas long enough to learn what the season before it was built to teach.
The direct answer: Advent is the church’s season of waiting before Christmas. The word means arrival. It marks two arrivals at once, the first coming of Jesus as a baby and the second coming still ahead. It trains you to hope inside the dark and the longing instead of rushing straight to the manger and skipping what the waiting was for.
What Does the Word Advent Actually Mean?
Start with the word itself, because the whole season is built on it. Advent comes from a Latin root meaning arrival, or coming. If something is arriving, by definition it has not gotten there yet. So the entire season is structured around waiting for a King who is on the way, not one who has already shown up and needs no anticipation.
Michelle Higgins traces the practice back further than the church calendar. The earth itself, she says, spent centuries of biblical history preparing for the Messiah to arrive. Advent is the church choosing to do that same work on purpose, every year, rather than letting the anticipation happen by accident or skipping it entirely.
“Advent comes from an ancient tradition of waiting. The word advent means arrival. What’s funny is that we live in Advent every day. As the earth prepared itself in the past, through biblical history, for the arrival of the Messiah, we honor the coming arrival, the second advent of our Lord Jesus, who is coming back.”
— Michelle Higgins
A reasonable question at this point: if the manger already happened two thousand years ago, why keep practicing waiting for something that has already arrived? The answer leads directly to the next point, because Advent was never pointed only backward.
Why Does Advent Point to Two Different Arrivals at Once?
This is the part most people miss when they treat Advent as a glorified countdown to Christmas morning. Advent does not only look back at the baby in Bethlehem. It points in two directions at once. Behind you sits the first arrival, when God took on flesh and entered the world as a child. Ahead of you sits the second arrival, when Jesus returns to finish what he started.
Dr. Christina Edmondson holds both of those truths in the same breath rather than letting one cancel out the other. The church looks back to remember the manger and looks forward to a King who has promised to return. Every believer lives somewhere in that middle space, whether they have a name for it or not. Advent gives that in-between season a name and a shape instead of leaving it formless.
“He is worthy of waiting for. And he is already here with us.”
— Christina Edmondson
Notice what that sentence refuses to do. It does not resolve the tension by picking one side: either God is fully present now, or God has not yet finished his work. It holds both, because that double truth is the actual shape of Christian hope between the two comings.
Isn’t Waiting Just Empty, Passive Time?
It sounds passive on the surface, but the hosts describe Advent as anything but. The season deliberately makes room for lament, the honest cry that things are not yet right, alongside real, unforced joy. Both are allowed to be true in the same season, even in the same breath.
Higgins is specific about what the season holds: penitence, petition and outright lament, all woven through with hope rather than canceled out by it. The goal is not to pretend the dark is not dark. The goal is to learn to wait inside that darkness without losing your grip on the promise that it will not stay this way.
“What I really love about the season of preparation is the joy and the celebration, and the deep sense of hope that comes during these seasons of penitence, petition, and outright lament. There’s a lot of lament and longing for the Lord.”
— Michelle Higgins
On this account, the honest version of hope has weight to it. Hope that costs nothing, that never has to sit with real grief or real waiting, is closer to denial than to faith. Advent hope sits inside the longing and keeps its eyes on the horizon anyway.
What Do You Actually Lose by Rushing to Christmas?
Our culture is built to skip the waiting entirely. The decorations arrive before Thanksgiving ends, and the weeks before December 25 become one long sprint toward the gifts under the tree. Advent pushes back against that sprint on purpose, asking you to sit in the not-yet before you celebrate the already.
This matters for more than tradition’s sake. If you never actually wait for something, its arrival stops carrying much weight when it finally comes. The joy of Christmas morning lands harder, not softer, when you have spent real weeks aware of exactly what you were waiting for. Skip the longing and you skip the depth the longing was building.
Edmondson names the tension the whole season is built to teach: God is already near to us, and yet God has not finished his work in the world. Advent trains you to live inside both truths at once instead of collapsing one into the other for the sake of comfort.
“What I love about the Black tradition is knowing a God who is already here, who has not yet fulfilled completely the liberation of his people.”
— Michelle Higgins
Do You Have to Grow Up in a Liturgical Church to Keep Advent?
No. This matters because plenty of believers assume Advent belongs to traditions they did not grow up in (Catholic, Anglican or Lutheran) and treat it as something foreign to import rather than something any Christian can practice. Higgins is upfront that she did not grow up celebrating Advent either. She came to the practice as an adult and found it gave language to something she had already been doing without a name for it.
That openness matters for how you might introduce the season to your own household or small group this year. You do not need candles, a liturgical calendar or formal training to start. Daily Scripture, a short prayer or a song that names the waiting is enough to begin building the practice, as long as you say it aloud with intention rather than rushing through it. The goal is not getting the form exactly right. It is training your attention toward the longing the season is built to hold.
This also answers a fair objection some readers will have: isn’t observing a church season just empty ritual if you were not raised in it? Higgins’s own story argues the opposite. A practice can be adopted honestly and still do real spiritual work, the same way any new discipline (fasting, journaling or a daily Scripture reading plan) does its work regardless of how long you have practiced it.
Quick Answers
What does the word Advent mean? It means arrival or coming. The season is the church’s time of waiting for the arrival of Jesus.
When is Advent? It begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas and runs through Christmas Eve. Christmas Day then celebrates the first coming of Jesus.
What are the two comings Advent points to? The first coming, when Jesus was born as a baby, and the second coming, when he returns. Advent looks back and forward at once.
Why not just skip ahead to Christmas? Rushing past the waiting flattens the joy. Advent makes room for longing and lament so the arrival means more when it actually comes.
Do you have to be from a liturgical church to keep Advent? No. Michelle Higgins says she did not grow up celebrating it. Anyone can use the season to practice waiting and hope, with daily Scripture, prayer and song.
Listen to the Full Conversation
Hear the full conversation on the Jude 3 Project podcast. Lisa Fields, founder of the Jude 3 Project, sits down with the hosts of Truth’s Table for a warm, funny, honest talk about Advent, waiting and hope in the season of longing. Find it wherever you get your podcasts, or stream past episodes on the Jude 3 Project website.
Truth’s Table is a podcast hosted by Ekemini Uwan, Dr. Christina Edmondson and Michelle Higgins. Built by and for Black women, the show talks through faith, culture and the Christian life. In this episode the three of them join Fields to talk about Advent and an Advent devotional they wrote together.
