Adventkranz

This post isn't going to be about anything very serious. it is going to be about Advent - the first three Sundays before Christmas, with Christmas Day counting as the fourth advent. That is how I am used to celebrating Advent but some people have 5 candles on their wreath, with the fifth candle counting for Christmas Day.

This Sunday we will light the first Advent candle on the wreath I made. Advent wreaths are a Germanic custom that I thought might interest you in your efforts to incorporate more of the 'reason for the season' into your Christmas.

One candle is lit on the first Advent, the third Sunday before Christmas, and two candles are lit when we are two Sundays before Christmas, and so on until on Christmas Day you have four lit candles. It is a way of providing a religious countdown to Christmas, and I think it helps to get in the mood for Christmas, instead of there being a huge rush of things and then, bang! Christmas is here and then it's gone before you know it.

I made my advent wreath with one of those metal wreath things you can buy at craft stores, with candle holders already in place. From the greenhouse, I bought some fir - at least I think it is fir - evergreens with needles that look more like grass than the more usual pine. I don't like needles to shed all over the place and neither fir nor balsam sheds. After cutting and wiring the branches to the wreath form, with a glue gun I glued dried pink flowers to the wreath, along with some realistic looking butterflies and birds.

You can decorate the wreath in any way you like. In Germany they are often very elaborate. I prefer a more natural look.

I put white candles in the wreath because that was what I had on hand.

Advent calendars were and still are also very popular among some Mennonite groups although today they are mostly made for children. Here you can buy them in almost any store. I don't know how it is in your area. They are calendars with religiously themed pictures that have little windows in them and in the bought versions, a small piece of chocolate behind each window.

Some Advent calendars now have activities to do for each of the 25 days before Christmas instead of chocolate and there are also 'advent' calendars that have nothing to do with the advent of Christ but focus on Frosty the Snowman and other secular Christmas creatures.

But the way I remember them from growing up was that there was no candy - there was a calendar with little windows for each day of the month, and you pulled them off to reveal a picture of some of the events leading up to the birth of Jesus. It helped to point us in the direction of what we are celebrating as well as provide a direction for our childish excitement to focus, as each day we pulled off a window, we were that much closer to Christmas Day.

There are instructions online how to make your own Advent calendar. Perhaps this too would be something you would want to incorporate into your Christmas? They are easily enough made with cardboard and craft paper and there are many instructions online. There are even Advent calendars online.

I also decorated the chandelier over the dining room table with fir and balsam and picks of real-looking grapes and such.

You know, I only realised within the last week what people are thinking when they do the birthday cake for Jesus thing in an effort to supplant Santa. Duh! I never understood it before but I think what they are thinking is that usually the birthday child gets gifts and so they want to remind their children that it is Jesus' birthday and not their own in spite of the presents most people receive on Christmas Day. I think they are thinking that children will get the wrong idea from presents due to the fact that they are associating gift-giving with themselves, instead of the birthday child, Jesus. Am I right? Did I finally understand correctly?

The reason I didn't understand before was because the way I understood the gift-giving was not about a birthday for anyone so much as that because God gave the most precious thing He had to us, we, in a small remembrance of that gift, give gifts to each other. So in my interpretation there never was a supplanting of Jesus by Santa, or a misunderstanding of birthdays.

I don't think the birthday thing would have made sense to me because there is nothing that we can give God or His Son but our hearts, our souls and our minds. Therefore there is no need for a birthday present.

Layla