Help Us Present a Catholic New Media Advent Calendar

Posted by Sean on November 17, 2008

The week before Halloween, I went looking for Halloween decorations and a costume to wear at my Kindergarten class Halloween party. They were hard to find because most dollar stores had already put away their Halloween items and were beginning to stock their shelves with Christmas decorations. On November 8th, our neighbours put up their Christmas tree. Over the years it seems that our secular consumer culture’s tendency to Christmas Creep has begun earlier and earlier.

Over the past 5 or 6 years I have become very concerned that the ever earlier presence of Christmas in our western society has squeezed out any room that was left for Advent, a season of preparation before the great Feast of Christmas.  Slowly and year by year, my family has taken time to light an advent wreath and explore other advent traditions.  We wait until Dec 23 or 24 to put up both our indoor and outdoor decorations and our tree and we leave them up until January 6.

The Catholic New Media Roundup would like to do our small part to put Advent back in it’s proper place as a season with its own unique traditions, and as a time of preparation for Christmas.

Beginning on November 30, the first Sunday of Advent, and ending on Christmas Day (or maybe on January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany) we will be hosting a Catholic New Media Advent Calendar at http://catholicroundup.com .
Every day we will feature a different Catholic New Media surprise by a guest Catholic blogger, podcaster, musician, or videocaster.

Potential surprises behind the mystery door of the day (or link as it were) could include:
music, short podcast clips, short videos, blog postings, fridge art, or whatever strikes the  author of the day’s fancy.  We may have advent songs, explanations of advent traditions in certain countries or family traditions, recipes, reflections on the coming of Christmas, Lolcats, or who knows.

We will be preparing a way to embed a link to the advent calendar on other sites if you are interested in posting the Catholic New Media Advent Calendar on your blog or website. (I’m still working out the technical details of that but it will probably be a snippet of html code and an image map pointing to the main calendar on catholicroundup.com). The magic of RSS will also enable people to subscribe to the Catholic New Media Advent Calendar and have it appear daily in their favorite blogreader or podcatcher.

If you are a Catholic blogger, podcaster, musician, writer, or all round social media type who would like to participate in the Catholic New Media Advent Calendar, drop me a note at catholicroundup (AT) gmail.com with your name and date preferred if you have one. I will forward details of how to send me your contribution as we get this project rolling.

Let’s help each other celebrate both the season of Advent and get to know some of the other wonderful people working in the fields of Catholic New Media.