Advent Traditions

Advent is a time of hopeful waiting… This year on December first we (Catholics) started a period of expectant waiting for the birth of Jesus that lasts until Christmas Day.  During this period, while people rush to the stores for presents, attend Christmas parties, hang lights, decorate trees, bake cookies, mail out cards- occupy their days with millions of outward signs of “Christmas” in my home we work at getting our hearts ready to Celebrate Jesus’ happy birthday.  We toil at remembering why we follow all those fun holiday traditions and work at not leaving out the guest of honor, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ - on His big day.

 My Advent Wreath (3 Purple candles, 1 Pink, 1 white)

What God Wants for Christmas Book & Gift Boxes

One of the neat Catholic traditions that I started doing at my home a few years back was the Advent Wreath.  On the center of my dinning room table, during the Christmas season, an evergreen wreath with five candles decorates the center.  This multi-purpose decoration serves to add Christmas cheer, but more importantly to unite the family on Sundays’ for family scripture reading accompanied by a short prayer.  The wreath is a church tradition used to symbolize the passing of the four weeks of Advent. Every Sunday one of the 5 candles gets lit successively for four weeks until on Christmas Day all five are lit – the fifth one representing the light of Jesus. In all simplicity, the wreath functions like a spiritual countdown to Christmas Day.

 What God Wants for Christmas building the Nativity

 I have a collection of Nativities

Having a six-year-old nephew, I always look for ways to teach him about our Catholic Culture in an age appropriate way.  Two years ago, I found a really neat book, What God Wants for Christmas, that tells the Christmas story using little gift boxes.  Each gift box contains a human character that helps create a nativity.  For example, the first page contains the story of the Angel Gabriel and how God chose him to be his messenger (Luke 1:26), after reading the first page my nephew opens gift box number one to find a small angel that is part of the manger scene.  He places the angel in its proper place on the nativity and we continue to the next page, until we reach gift number seven, the best surprise, what God wants for Christmas.  This has helped him understand that gift giving started with Papi Dios and that Saint Nicolas is only one of God’s instruments. 
   

Santa Kneeling in front of baby Jesus.