advent

advent \AD-vent\, noun:
1. a coming into place, view, or being; arrival: the advent of the holiday season.
2. (usually initial capital letter) the coming of Christ into the world.
3. (initial capital letter) the period beginning four Sundays before Christmas, observed in commemoration of the coming of Christ into the world.
4. (usually initial capital letter) Second Coming.
Mrs. Davilow, too, although she would not respond to her sister's pregnant remark, could not be inwardly indifferent to an advent that might promise a brilliant lot for Gwendolen.
-- George Eliot, Daniel Deronda, 1876
The rest of the hogs are grouped around in various attitudes, more or less influenced by the advent of the Knight.
-- William Gilmore Simms, The Golden Christmas, 1852
Advent came to English in the 1100s from the Latin adventus meaning "arrival" or "approach."