For those of you who don’t know, Advent is the four weeks leading up to Christmas, which focus on the coming of the Lord – both as a baby in a manger, and as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. There are several traditions which have emerged for the celebration of Advent, the two most popular being the Advent Calendar and Advent Candles.
Advent Calendars have a “door” for each day which opens up and contains a surprise. With enough preparation you can make your own in a variety of ways. If you have children, you may consider buying each of them their own Advent calendar – some have little chocolate candies behind each door (Cracker Barrel restaurants usually carry these). There are also Lego Advent Calendars!
Advent Candles are 4 candles, 3 purple (or blue), one pink. During the first week, one candle is lit every day (maybe during dinner?). On the second week, two candles. And so on. This builds anticipation and counts down to Christmas day.
Some other ideas:
Do the daily readings for Advent. Here are the Anglican Lectionary readings for each day.
Celebrate St. Nicholas’ Day as part of the festivities (Dec. 6). Give a small gift on this day, as a kind of appetizer for the Christmas to come.
If you have a nativity set at home, don’t put the Christ Child in the manger until Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. And don’t put Mary and Joseph in the scene either. Have them moving around through the house on their journey to Bethlehem. Put them in the scene a few days before Christmas, then on Christmas bring out the Christ Child. Don’t put the wise men in until the 12th day of Christmas – Epiphany – which is a celebration of the wise men worshiping Christ.
Finally – not really an advent thing, rather a Christmas thing – but consider planning ahead and giving a small gift each day of the 12 days of Christmas. You can wrap each of them individually, put them in a basket together, give them on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, but only the one marked “1″ gets opened then. The others get opened on each day of the 12 day season. They can be themed, connected, or completely unrelated.
Whatever you do, enter into Advent and Christmas intentionally! Don’t let the shopping become the central focus, but create your own family traditions and make Jesus the center of it all.
When Rick and I were married, he started the December 6 St. Nicolas gift giving, which was a complete delight for my young sons. It’s lagniappe.
I like the idea of 12 gifts for the 12 days, which could be Hanukkah lagniappe.