Our good friends, Carla and Sean, are expecting their first little guy any minute. Although they are in Toronto, vicariously anticipating their baby gives me a renewed sense of expectancy this Christmas. Arranging greens, collecting red pepper berries, stringing cranberries, moving knick knacks out to make room for stockings and candles, I am not unlike the nesting mother folding and refolding cloth diapers. Advent is a time of preparation. This year, even more literally, I see how it parallels the instinctual desire to nest as we prepare to make room for a new person in our lives.
Around the fifth month of pregnancy, the "nesting" instinct sets in. (I speak not from experience but from speedy online research.) This can be the uncontrollable urge to clean one's house, tie up loose ends, or organize your world. Females of the animal kingdom are all equipped with this same need. It is a primal instinct. The act of nesting puts you in control and gives a sense of accomplishment toward birth. You may become a homebody and want to retreat into the comfort of home. In short, there seems to be no end to the lengths a nesting mother will go to prepare for her upcoming arrival.
The traditional frenzy of Christmas has a point: to make room for Jesus in our hearts.
photo credit: www.neatorama.com
