Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Advent begins today, for those who don’t know, Advent is the start of the New Year in the Christian Church calendar.

Advent starts on the 4th Sunday before December 25 and Advent ends on Christmas Eve (Dec. 24th) so this year Advent is about 25 days long.

What is Advent? The season of waiting and preparing for the Festival of Christmas (i.e. Christ’s birth), and since it nicely fits at the end of most folks’ fiscal year, it’s an excellent metaphor for your preparation for the end of your Financial Year as well. You could spend Advent preparing for Christmas, but also preparing for next year (in terms of Personal Finance) as well.

Advent Wreath

To most people the only exposure to Advent is the calendars that are sold in most stores that have a box that is open each day of Advent (we are guilty of this as well, we have a Playmobil one that will create a Pirate scene for our son (a Christmasy, Pirate scene?)).

To others you have the Advent Wreath at Church (Mrs. Caj is complaining that this graphic has purple candles and they should be BLUE).

Start your fiscal planning for the coming, year, and start planning and preparing for Christmas too (no, that doesn’t mean bankrupt yourself by spending as much as possible (if you thought that is what I meant)).

And a belated Happy All Saints Day (on Saturday the1st). All Saints is the festival where we celebrate all Saints known and not know.

All Souls’ Day we celebrate on the 2nd of November, is a festival where we commemorate the faithful departed. These two days sort of get forgotten in all the “hub bub” and “hurley burly” of All Hallows’ Even (or Celtic New Year if you want to look at it that way).

Christmas is Here?

Walking through Loblaws on All Saints Day I heard Christmas Music (not Carols, but Johnny Mathis and others). This is going to be a different Christmas if I continue to be unemployed, so we shall see how this plays out. Loblaws already had their Christmas displays up, as did other stores and the onslaught that is Christmas begins anew.

Fall Back

Yes on Saturday night you should have “Fallen Back” an hour with your clocks, moving us back to Standard time. I have an old VCR that does this automatically, and it did it last week (back when we used to do it), but it will be correct this week. Hopefully you didn’t show up an hour early for any appointments on Sunday.

Carnivals

• The Carnival of Embarassing Stories for November included my infamous story A Parable About Advice (not just Financial).

I was kicking around writing a post about the Financial Apocalypse and whether I could find a really good bible passage from Revelations that might fit what has been going on in the Financial Markets this week and then point out that this might actually be a sign of the Apocalypse (mostly tongue in cheek of course), but I have written enough about this economic cluster flop enough for one week, so let me write about something that we all need to have, and that is Hope.

Romans 12:12 Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.

Hope is what makes me get up in the morning, and what lets me sleep at night. Hope is what makes me believe that I will find a job soon. Hope is what got me through a very tough summer where I could have easily fallen into an ocean of self-pity. Hope helps me realize that I have far too much and should be thankful for all I have, for my family and my good friends.  Hope is hard to hold onto sometimes, but anything worthwhile or worth doing is hard. It’s easy to give up, it’s much harder to keep going.

Hope will be what turns this whole economic mess around as well. There will be changes, things may not get better over night or even soon, but they will be better eventually. I am not giving any advice here, I am saying have Hope and believe in the good things that will come.

Be joyful and have hope too, life is a gift, unwrap it and enjoy it.

Luke 6:1-11

Then said Jesus unto them, I will ask you one thing; Is it lawful on the sabbath days to do good, or to do evil? to save life, or to destroy it?

Is is right to work on Sunday (or Saturday if you are Hebrew or Muslim)? I’ve asked this a bunch of times with mixed responses. I remember the days when all stores were closed on Sundays except a few pharmacists and the Perette’s (now I am showing how old I am). In that day, Sunday was a day to do not much, by act of law (you couldn’t do much else).

In the past 15 years, the advent of Sunday shopping has caused every day to be a shopping day, and Sunday’s “day of rest” tag seems to have gone by the wayside, but is it wrong to shop on Sunday? I don’t think it’s a wrong thing in the spiritual side of things, as long as you have time to meditate or observe your sabbath in some way, so that you feel renewed. 

Do I work on Sundays? Yes, I have and do usually doing things around the house, some shopping and maybe even career work as well, but I try not to do it too often, I like the idea of one day where you try to relax and contemplate about life. 

Do you work on Sundays (or on your sabbath)?