I know, I know, you're focused on Thanksgiving right now. Just bookmark this for next week.
Advent is coming! I always feel a little silly saying that, because the word "advent" actually means "coming." But that's how life is when you're In Charge of Stuff: you even have to plan about planning ahead. So, if you haven't looked it up yet, the first Sunday in Advent is Dec. 2, which is less than two weeks away.
We do try to put off celebrating Christmas until it's actually almost Christmas. I claim this is because it would be a violation of the integrity of the spirit of penance and preparation to behave as if Christmas has already arrived; but actually my main reason is that my fine young sons see decorations as a challenge. A punching challenge. When some new vision swims before their eyes, whether it's a pillow or a brother or gorgeous centerpiece bedecked with fragile berries, gilded bells and trembling, cinnamon-scented miniature pine cones, they say to themselves, "Gotta punch that."
So I put off Christmas as long as possible for Christmas' own good. I don't want Christmas to get punched.
Advent, however, can take a little smacking around. One of the great things about any kind of Advent preparation is that, by definition, you have to keep it simple and spare. A lush, lavish, complicated Advent makes about as much sense as a simple, understated fireworks display on the Fourth of July.
So as Advent approaches, I always remind myself that, while there are lots of wonderful ideas out there for how to observe the season, it's not only impossible to do it all, it would be contrary to the spirit of the season to go overboard! I plan small, and we can always add things later on years when we're feeling ambitious and energetic. We aim for simple, inexpensive, and edifying.
We do two things without fail every Advent. The first is an Advent wreath, which we attempt to light every night while singing "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" (adding two verses each week); but some years, it's mostly a Sunday thing. I just bought a cheapo twisted twig wreath at the dollar store, then use about forty yards of thread strapping evergreen branches down thoroughly. If I can't find purple and pink candles, I just use white, and tie on bows made of ribbon or cloth in the right colors. Oh, and after a lifetime of trying to attach candle holders to a wreath, I just gave up, and now use (again, cheapo dollar store) glass candle holders, which I set inside the wreath. I put the whole thing on a pizza pan, so I can easily move it off the table and store it in a safe, unpunchable place when it's not in direct use. Some years we have little golden balls and berries and doves, but other years, it's just the greenery. Here are prayers for each Sunday. Print it out now, along with a few copies of "O Come Emmanuel," and tape it to your pizza pan or something.
If this sounds unpleasantly practical and workaday to you, remember: Advent is dark. Lights out. Once you have candlelight and a capella singing, it's just as magical and luminous and mysterious as whatever the Vatican is doing on that same day.
(The child pictured above is utterly failing to think, "Tippy candle? No pinecones? This Advent is not impressive at all!")
The second thing we do for Advent is we all go to confession once or twice before Christmas.
That's it. That's the bare minimum, and some years, it's also the maximum we can manage. There are plenty of wonderful Advent ideas. But please remember, KEEP IT SIMPLE. Don't go overboard. Pick one or two, and don't make it elaborate. And make sure you get to confession!
If you want a hands-on project for your kids but aren't feeling very crafty, my sister Abby Tardiff put together this 2012 Advent Chain. [Sorry for the bad link this morning. This link will now bring you to my blog, where you will find a pdf to download.] Print out the six pages, cut the days into separatestrips, and staple or tape them into a long chain. You can hang the chain on your Christmas tree if you have one already, or anywhere in the house (hang it high, to avoid punching). Starting on Dec. 1 (which is Saturday, the vigil of the first Sunday in Advent), you cut off one link each day and read what's inside. Each link includes a Bible verse and a relevant picture, which kids can color.
If you like, you can color or attach the paper strips to construction paper strips before you make them into a chain: purple for the first, third and (very short) fourth weeks, and pink for the third week. I like the idea of a chain, because you can see it getting smaller and smaller as Christmas approaches. You can explain to kids that it reminds us of the chains of sin, which get weaker and weaker until our Savior arrives -- and then the chain is gone.
You could also use these verses and picture as ornaments for a Jesse Tree, adding one ornament each day of Advent. Or, if you're feeling brave and have kids who are old enough, you could just dump all your craft materials on the table, assign different symbols to each kid, and go hide for a couple of hours and see what happens. We do this some years for our "day after Thanksgiving" tradition. Lacking space for a free-standing Jesse Tree, I actually just clip a branch from a bare tree and bolt it to the wall. It looks good and weird, like a Catholic home should.
Another very easy Advent tradition that we manage to keep as a family most years is to "fast" from dessert except on Sundays. I take what money I would have spent, and buy extra food for the church's food pantry.
What are your Advent plans? On the years when you really followed the spirit of the season, what was it like?
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We try for the every night wreath lighting, but with activities, sports, homework, etc., it is usually a Saturday and Sunday night thing. We also do a Jesse Tree, but very kid centered and do it yourself (doesn’t that sound better than saying I don’t ever seem to be able to get it together in advance?). I draw a tree on a piece of posterboard, and we read from a children’s Bible and the kids make their own ornament every day based on what they think the symbol should be. I give them circles and squares cut out from construction paper and we tape them to the board. Yes it is messy, and we wind up with tons and tons of drawn ornaments, but it works for us. Sometimes I let the little kids do a coloring page based on the reading while they listen to the story, but not always. Sometimes not all the kids are doing it at the same time, but the stories are short, so we can do it more than once a day. I find flexibility is the most important thing here, it keeps us all sane.
Good timing, Simcha. What I’m planning for Advent: an Advent Wreath and our first Jesse Tree. Here is a link to the free printable ornaments: http://www.eriercd.org/jessetree.htm Oh, and confession, too. Thanks for the reminder.
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I’m glad you posted about simplicity though, because I came across this Cradle-to-Cross wreath and found myself coveting it. http://adventtolenttoascensionwreath.blogspot.kr/ It is truly beautiful, but not in our budget this year.
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Have a Happy Thanksgiving!
One of our favorite Advent traditions is to read the Jotham’s Journey Trilogy by Arnold Ytreeide. Every Advent we start with Jotham’s Journey, the first in the trilogy, and go through the rest of the books the next two years. It takes three Advents, but then you start all over again. Each day of Advent you read a portion of the story that leaves you with a cliffhanger and a lesson to learn and guides you and your family up to the birth of Christ on Christmas Day. They are engaging and spiritual for the whole family. My four girls, some of them teens, still look forward to the stories even though they already know what’s going to happen as we have gone through the trilogy several times now. I highly recommend starting this tradition in your own family! http://www.jothamsjourney.com/
Several years ago, after an extremely stressful advent being pulled in 10 directions by different parts of of our families, I decided I had enough and needed some calm during this time. We put up a bare tree at the beginning of advent and no other decorations except for the snowflake dishes (it doesn’t actually snow here, its just a reminder that it is supposed to be winter). We put off “Christmas” gatherings as long as possible and limit the number we are willing to attend (big families with divorce and out of towners, it gets ridiculous). We light our candles and read a devotion, and some years do a Jesse tree ornament depending on if there is a baby wearing me out or not, lol. But at any time someone attempts to start drama about who is going where, I can just sit down and look at my bare tree and remember what we are doing, and what we are waiting for, and whose feelings really matter.
Our Advent wreath is constructed in the exact same manner (loose candle holders and thread and all), but this year I’m going to put it all on a pizza tray as you suggested so I don’t have to move it, piece by piece, every time we eat dinner or do school work! I’m also throwing that new CD of nuns singing Advent music into the mix.
The first thing for me is Confession in preparation for the Coming, Expectation. Second is the get together of my family on Christmas day. I always look forward to seeing my grand-niece and her boyfriend with their inevitable cell phones. Talk about generational gap!
Our “if we don’t do anything else but this…” tradition for advent is filling a manger with our small sacrifices. We now have an actual manger, but in past years we used a shoe box. I keep a basket full of actual straw, or yarn to represent straw and the kids love to make little sacrifices to make sure on Christmas morning when Jesus is suddenly in the manger, that he has a nice soft bed. I am amazed every year how they will continually look for little things to do for me or their siblings to put straw in the manger. Just thought someone might like to try this. We love it.
‘It looks good and weird, like a Catholic home should.’
This is a great line.One of your best and that’s saying a lot. It Captures the essences of , I don’t know, everything about following Christ and how that looks to the world and even how it looks to us much of the time. When your NFP book is finished, publish a collecton of all you essays on Catholic Family life and Title it, Weird, But a Good Weird.
Growing up, we used a rather threadbare Advent wreath that had been made by me or one of my sisters at CCD, out of styrofoam and plastic branches. Now that I have my own home, I’d really like to do something a bit less . . . ugly. I can’t help but be afraid of using real evergreen, though - isn’t it a major fire hazard by the 3rd or 4th week, with all those dry needles, and the candles? Has anyone had problems with this, or am I being paranoid?
(We have no kids, and I mostly trust my husband and I to not knock over lighted candles and start a fire, but I’m still nervous.)
My mother had a very simple, black metal “wreath” with candle holders built in. It also had a little spike between the candles where you could stick an apple, pinecone, etc for decoration. I wish I could find another like it.I’ve seen metal wreaths but not with the spikes.
We decorate the tree on Christmas Eve even though we seem to be the only family still doing this locally.Our neighbors must think the Grinch resides at my home, until they see the lights on Dec. 24th.After that we’re usually the last family to take them down after Jan. 6th.
We do the Advent wreath and sing “O Come O Come Emmanuel” every night. Just the first verse though. On Christmas Eve we sing Silent Night. We also turn the lights out. The kids love it. We also do the Oriental Trading velcro Nativity scene starting on December 1. Over the last five years or so, the kids have without fail done the construction paper chain, but one of them has to initiate it. Everyone who’s old enough goes to Confession once. That’s it. All the other stuff we do during Advent is actually Christmas stuff.
Yes! Simple! Thank you, Simcha. Another suggestion involving “O come Emmanuel”. We have electric candles that we place in our bedroom windows. Every evening at sunset we “light them” while singing, “O Come Emmanuel”. The children think it is super cool to sleep with the candle in their window. We turn them off when we wake. We don’t put up Christmas lights until just before Christmas.
@Kathleen2: I wouldn’t be worried about a fire. We use real greens for our wreath and it has never been a problem. Most people are present for the entire time the wreath is lit each evening, so even if it did catch fire you would be able to put it out fairly easily. We light ours during dinner.
One more suggestion: Pull the kids out of all or most of their extracurricular activities for the month and do something as a family instead (this may not be practical for everyone).
Oh my goodness, please extend some hope for all of us that are craft-impaired! Just talking about downloading pdfs for advent prayer chains gives me a rapid heartbeat. It IS a beautiful idea. I know I inherited an aversion for all things home spun, but at the same time realize we missed out on something beautiful. Even walking into the craft store gives me a rash. Christmas themed sweaters or vests provoke nearly evil thoughts. I will concede that some of my fondest memories from Advent when I was a child was making ornaments from dough, baking them and painting them, and watching my mother make her grandmother’s date bars. Other than this and the beautiful advent calendars, we are bereft of any meaningful advent tradition. I am inspired to begin the tradition of making an advent wreathe from our pine or redwood trees. The scent of evergreen reminds me of God. Maybe there is hope for us! The singing part? Not a chance. Confession? Yes, without fail.
I’m combining things this year for simplicity - I am making an advent calendar but on the calendar I will list their good deeds for the day and I will attach the day’s reading (thank you so much for that link, Simcha and Simcha’s sister!). That way we will be doing the countdown, doing a daily reading, and offering some good deeds for penance all in one place.
If you hot-glue the cheapo dollar-store candle holders to the pizza pan for the season it can easily be taken off at the end from both candle holder and pan. This prevents the candles from from falling off and snapping in half during the precarious trip from counter to table….EVERYTHING is precarious with 9 kids running around. I speak from experience :)
Ah, hot glue! One of the major sacramentals of the domestic church.
Right up there with duct tape.
Hmmm…nice idea, but anyone know anything good for those of us who are on our own for the season? It’s already a bit lonely out here, and all the advent stuff I’ve found seems to be based around including the kiddies!
The nice thing about “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” is that it’s based on the O Antiphons, which are the antiphons used as vespers starting on December 17.
DarkLight, we have no children in our house either. My own simple Advent tradition is to try to light the candle(s) each night and simply sit quietly in a darkened room and watch the candle(s) flicker for a little while. I either just rest in the silence, or else I meditate upon some spiritual thought or scripture reading. Just for a few minutes. And that is a real pleasure during a hectic Christmas season. One other idea: sometimes my husband and I will light the Advent candle(s) while we eat our dinner. Then blow out the candles when we are done. I just love to think about the nature of Advent: the whole world very still and quiet in the dark, and waiting for the advent of a great and abiding Love.
Posted by Natalie on Tuesday, Nov 20, 2012 2:46 PM (EDT):Right up there with duct tape.”
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Known in some parts as “West Virginia chrome”.
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DarkLight, I’ve had trouble finding non kid-related Advent activities, too. I think if we had kids, we could manage singing when we light the candles, but the thought of just my husband and I singing around the dinner table strikes me as ridiculous, no matter how much I love “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” I haven’t done much for past Advents since moving out of my parents house, but I’m determined not to let another one pass me by. Prayer, candles, and confession know no age.
Well, no confession for me allowed until Lent, so that’s right out! And “dinner” is…a bit iffy in grad student housing. Usually you eat the mac’n'cheese on the couch because there’s papers all over the table.
Still, the prayer and candles sound like a nice touch, even if I’d have to clear a spot for them!
I am printing the chain. It can help replace the failed Jesse tree that I did an ornament co-op for, then they were too big for any kind of small tree solution and the ornaments got lost/mutilated…ha.
Whenever there is a holiday I wish we lived in a more Catholic society and there were communal celebrations of various feasts and holidays to help supplement my efforts. Trying to celebrate Christmas through Epiphany without family or communal support is difficult.
I enjoyed reading this book last year: “A Catholic Christmas” by Kathleen Carroll. It begins with a history of the holiday followed by chapters on feast days in Advent and Christmas.
Every Sunday we turn out all the lights except for the Christmas tree (which doesn’t come out until the Feast of St. Nicholas) and the candle on the advent wreath. Then after saying the advent prayer for the week, we eat our dinner by the light of the wreath. With each week, the additional candle makes dinner a little brighter. It’s a very visible reminder for the children of the arrival of the Light of the World getting closer! We also always do the Christmas Novena as a family which starts on the Feast of St. Andrew.
I just love Simcha Fisher!
@Darklight - in my single pre-children life, I still had a wreath of candles - but i didn’t light them often, but I loved seeing them. I look back now and think that it was a blessed time when I sat by my candles and journaled while I worked my way through Luke chapters 1 & 2 at about 10 verses a night. Volunteering, phone calls to different family - my grandparents and an aunt each weekend (I was horrible about that, but it always seemed like a good time to reach out and I’ve been really glad I did). Otherwise, as a student then as a teacher I was just overwhelmed enough working and doing all the December extras that a bit of decoration and a before bed routine was simple and enough.
We have a manger that the kids fill with soft yarn as they do good deeds or extra prayers. They are making the manger soft for Jesus. Then, on Christmas morning, Jesus is in the manger. We put the manger on the table as part of our dinner centerpiece—it conjures up all sorts of powerful Eucharistic thoughts. We have an amazing God!
We also have a pregnant Mary on a donkey traveling with Joseph. They move all around the house. On Christmas eve, the kids all play a different role in the “No room at the Inn” story. Mary knocks on the different doors of the kids’ rooms and asks if there is room. The last child sends them to the stable where they are set up and wait for Jesus. Jesus is in the manger when they wake up in the morning.
Advent Chains are popular here. Thanks for the links :-)We do the Advent wreath and kids take turns blowing out the candles—they like to see how far the wax can fly when the blow out the candles…yea, my favorite part too.
Last year, we hosted an Advent party. I was printing up all of these round Jesse ornaments but was having a hard time figuring out how to make them more sustainable. Suddenly, I looked down and amidst the clutter on the floor was a concentrated juice can lid (we save these—they make such great “coins” for the little ones)...Wouldn’t you know, those little round Jesse tree ornaments fit perfectly inside the lid-God is so good, and wouldn’t you know, we had enough lids to make 26 ornaments for 15 kids—yes, lots of great recycling!! So we glued them on and glued pink or purple round circles to the backside to hold a ribbon. They can go on the tree, a branch, or on our Advent Wreath. We also like to watch Holy Heroes Advent Adventures at HolyHeroes.com - -Free and lots of ideas for Advent, readings, decade of the Rosary, crossword puzzles, word searches, coloring pages, etc…the kids love it. They have the verses for O Come Emmanuel, Jesse tree info, etc.
We homeschool and are considering greatly reducing our regular curriculum to spend more time in prayer, Adoration, and at Mass…yes, and Confession.
We vary more vs. less—just depends on the year.
@DarkLight
My husband and I are grad students, and for the past few years we’ve eaten dinner to candle light, then after dinner listened to a copy of O Come O Come E… on youtube while doing a 5 minute liturgy we found on the internet. We love the rhythm and quietness it adds to the end of our day, but it’s super easy and works well w/o kiddos.
I think that you are on to something, Simcha… all my ceramic Nativity Scene pieces have been “blessed” with a good dousing of Elmer’s glue-all over the years as they wandered the house for Advent (17 years and holding)... The commercial adhesives…holding the faith together…sacramentals of the domestic church…..definitely on to something ;)
Oh Simcha—I wish I could go back and be a mom like you!
Don’t forget the “O Antiphons” counting down to Christmas. Amazingly beautiful words for both young and old. On a very dark and cloudy Dec 21…I had just recited the antiphon for the day….O Oriens (Morning Star) brightness of Eternal Life…when the sun actually broke through the clouds in dramatic fashion. My 8 year-old’s jaw dropped…he asked me if that happens every year!!!
For the past few years, my family have exchanged gifts on St. Nicholas feast day (Dec. 6), leaving Christmas Day uncluttered with boxes, ribbons, cards and STUFF. If you want to make ONE change this year, try doing that. You’ll be amazed (as we have been) at what happens. Just try it once!
@T. Audrey….
Totally agree! Reading this brings back fond memories of my homemade Advent calendars and the kids fighting over whose turn it was to light and/or blow out the candles on the Advent wreath.
My babies are now husbands themselves, one of them a Daddy of two, and I wish I could go back to those sweet years. (However, I would never willingly re-live the years that involved teenagers!)
I suggest making an Advent calendar (or buying one) that has the Gospel accounts of events leading up to Christmas itself. It is handy for setting the stage for the big day.
It was only recently that I came to understand that Advent is like a little Lent. These plans came to my head: go to Confession and get my sibs gifts mailed before Christmas this year.
We had a tradition growing up that I have continued in my years since moving out: putting up the empty Creche at the beginning of Advent, with Mary and Joseph and a donkey (if you have it) somewhere across the room. Each Sunday of Advent, move the Holy Family a little closer, and add an animal to the Creche. On Christmas Eve, Mary and Joseph have made it to the full stable, and on Christmas morning, Baby Jesus and the Shepherds are added, and the Wisemen begin their own journey toward the manger! :)
Growing up, we didn’t put up our tree until Christmas Eve, but I usually put it up much sooner these days. Still, I try to hold off from decorating it fully—sometimes just a little each week, with the grand finale of lights on Christmas Eve. I also try to avoid listening to Christmas music, although that’s much harder. :)
my mom makes the best wreaths. Try using a spool of wire instead of thread
Posted by 1 on Wednesday, Nov 21, 2012 4:41 PM (EDT):my mom makes the best wreaths. Try using a spool of wire instead of thread
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Good advice. WalMart sells the green florist’s wire.They’ve got other florist supplies.You can make your own wedding,prom, or Mother’s Day corsages,too.
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