As Homecoming recedes in the mirror, Christmas and the wider holiday and holy season approaches. As I was walking along College Avenue this morning before leaving town, I noticed State College Borough crews hoisting the Christmas Tree at the Allen Street Gate. Christmas wreaths had already been placed earlier in the morning on the lamp posts lining College and Beaver Avenues. A somewhat less chilly, and certainly more festive-feeling, day after a frigid Homecoming experience. Autumn will soon give way to winter, but in the meantime I’ll enjoy both seasons and start thinking about ways this Christmas can be marked without allowing the hollow sentimentality or secular-type materialism to evaporate Advent’s essential mystery.