Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! We did! We have so much to be thankful for! This morning we are blanketed with a couple inches of snow and so it reminds me that it's time to look toward Christmas.
Advent is a tradition that I grew up with and I've learned over the years that right after Thanksgiving you need to get started or before you know it you're late getting your candles out! I found this site that does a really good job explaining what Advent is and what different weeks, colors etc... represent. Basically, for those that don't know it's a time of "waiting" and/or "anticipating" the celebration of Jesus' birth. You light a candle each week leading up to Christmas day.
For us Advent reminds us to keep Christ in Christmas. I think it's so easy in our culture, if you don't intentionally plan, to lose that emphasis. We are so bombarded with the secular and material Christmas.
Our Advent wreath has almost always been four red candles with one white in the center. My mom always had bright red but I have usually gone to a more burgundy color as that looks better with my color scheme. Traditionally, I guess the candles are purple, pink and white (you can read more about that at the site I mentioned above) but we have never done that. I'm not sure why but the church I grew up in did the red and white too. We have since gone back to that church to visit my parents and they now do purple ones. Maybe it was a trend in the 70's and 80's, I don't know. We're sticking with red and white...tradition you know.
We light the candles, usually on Sunday night and read scripture. Our kids take turns (youngest to oldest and we have 4 so that works for us!) lighting the candles and Daddy lights the Christmas candle. Now that they can read sometimes they will read or sometimes my husband or I will. Last year a couple of the kids wanted to pick the reading and "plan" the night so we let them. In years pasts I have followed devotions from different books and things but most years we do our own. We read a scripture, starting with the announcements to Mary and Joseph the first week and on from there. After we read the scripture Daddy usually asks a question related to it and then we sing a hymn and close in prayer. It's really not all that formal and the kids really look forward to it over the years. It's become a tradition for our kids.
At any rate I encourage you to give it a try if you never have and if you've already done it don't forget to get your candles out this week!
Gina
p.s. The above picture is old (2005) but it's my favorite advent picture from the scrapbook.
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