Advent traditions

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Diana_Catherine

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I am wondering if anyone follows a more traditional Catholic holiday season. I mean like celebrating the Advent season prior to Christmas, maybe waiting a little while to put up the Christmas tree and decorations and keeping the celebration going through Epiphany and beyond.

I have recent years done Advent along with all the Christmas goings on around us but was this year going to do more with Advent and hold off on Christmas a little bit. Just wondering if anyone else does and what type of traditions do you do during Advent to prepare for Christmas?
 
We always did this growing up. It really does help make Christmas more special. 🙂

For advent we would always have an advent wreath. Every evening we would turn off all the lights and light the candle/s (1 candle the 1st week, 2 candles the 2nd week etc) and say our evening prayers. It is a great way to help prepare for the coming of Christ, the light of the world, because the difference in the amount of light between 1 candle and 4 candles is surprisingly large. As Advent goes on you see that the light of Christ is getting nearer and nearer. We would also add singing advent hymns to our evening prayers, such as “People Look East”, “O come O come Emmanuel”, “Long is Our Winter”, “A story I will tell you” etc. It really helped set the mood for advent.
 
Yes, I have begun to actually celebrate the Advent Season. On the first Sunday of Advent, I take out all the Christmas decorations from the attic. I organize them and decide what I will be using for this year. I put up the stable with animals, shepherds, and manger, but no Jesus, Mary, Joseph or wise men. I put up the Advent wreath. I often buy my Christmas tree early Advent but don’t decorate it yet. As the weeks go on, I’ll decorate little by little. If my parents were coming to visit, I would probably clean the house for two days. I take four weeks to get the house ready for Jesus!
I attend daily Mass a bit more frequently and may be attend an Advent prayer service or two. This year I have the goal to do something more structured prayer-wise. May be I’ll try to do Liturgy of the Hours at least once per day this year.

p.s. Christmas Eve I place Mary and Joseph in the stable. When I get home from Midnight Mass, I place Jesus in the manger. I place the wise men across the room and move them a little closer each day and they reach at the stable on the feast of Epiphany. My husband says I like playing with dolls.
 
We have an Advent wreath and an Advent calander. We celebrate Advent with family meals, parties, a Los Pasados celebration, caroling, viewing light shows, attending the church Advent tea, and other similar activities. I like to have a family party on the Epithany. We start taking down the Christmas stuff and haul out the Mardi Gras stuff instead. I usually spend more time celebrating in the days right before Christmas than after, because that’s when I’m off from work.
 
I have been to any different churches–Catholic, various Protestant denominations, and other non-Protestant churches–and they all light candles for Advent, and have special readings for each week. When I was a young child, my family also did a brief Advent ceremony each Sunday evening at home, including lighting our own candles.

I made my own Advent wreath a few years ago (athough the glass candle holders usually don’t last more than one season in my house! 😉 ). I’m not sure exactly what I’m going to do yet as far as weekly devotions. Definitely prayer, meditation, and some holy readings. 🙂

Jala
 
We do celebrate advent as a season distinct from Christmas. We always have a wreath and light the candles during dinner. We also do special devotional reading and often another devotional practice a bit like lenten observences. This year I’ll be going to noon daily Mass with a co-worker every day possible.

We don’t put up any Christmas decorations until Gaudete Sunday (3rd Sunday of Advent)and we leave them up until Epiphany (Jan 6) or sometimes until the Presentation of the Lord (Feb 2) depending on work schedules and when Ash Wednesday is.
 
Diana_Catherine said:
I am wondering if anyone follows a more traditional Catholic holiday season. I mean like celebrating the Advent season prior to Christmas, maybe waiting a little while to put up the Christmas tree and decorations and keeping the celebration going through Epiphany and beyond.

I have recent years done Advent along with all the Christmas goings on around us but was this year going to do more with Advent and hold off on Christmas a little bit. Just wondering if anyone else does and what type of traditions do you do during Advent to prepare for Christmas?
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👍👍😃
 
As a relatively new Eastern Catholic(5 years), I love the 6 week Pre-Nativity fast that the church puts before us. We abstain from meat during the 6 week fast, attend the weekly advent prayer service on Wednesdays and spend more time in prayer awaiting the Feast of the Nativity. After Christmas day, we Feast for 12 days and experience the Christmas season all the way to the Presentation of the Lord.
 
Since Thomas wants us to talk about this…😃

There are two Saint days during Advent that we celebrated when my children were younger. We still recognize them, but not quite in the same ways now.

Dec 6 is the feast of St Nicholas. In many countries this is when children get their presents - not Christmas Day. We had a special dinner with cookies for dessert and eachchild got one small present - a book or a small toy.

Dec 13 is the feast of St Lucia (Lucy) who is greatly revered in Sweden. We have some Swedish heritage and my daughter loved doing this so we celebrated as they do in Sweden. On the morning of December 13, the oldest daughter wear a long white dress with a red ribbon around the waist and a wreath on her head. She serves coffee and special bread (like a fruitcake or nut bread) to the rest of the family and sings.

We have also built up a Jesse tree with a special ornament to represent each character. We would read the story (OT) of the person when we added the ornament to the tree.

I also collect nativities so over the course of advent they would all come out, but baby Jesus doesn’t go in until Christmas Eve.

Also during advent is the feast of the Immaculate Conception. I usually served a traditional Mexican dinner that night (not tex-Mex). We also light a candle in front of our Mary statute.

I think I said this before, but we wait until Gaudete Sunday to put up our tree and regular Christmas decorations which we don’t take down until at least Epiphany (Jan 6).
 
Recently, I have been looking for appropriate ways to express Advent’s penitential/preparatory theme, which I always overlooked before (despite the violet vestments, and suppression of the Gloria, I never noticed until last year).

Also, there are the Winter Ember Days in late December.

Everything else I know of has been well discussed already.
 
Yes we do. I haven’t gotten to the point of adopting the Eastern tradition of the Nativity fast but we don’t put the tree up until just before Christmas Eve. The putting up day depends on schedule, but we don’t decorate it until Christmas Eve and don’t take it down until after Epiphany. It helps that we use an artificial tree ( due to my allergies ) so we don’t have to deal with trash pick up rules or finding a good tree so close to Christmas.

I’ve tried to not play Christmas music until Christmas eve except for notable advent songs like Gaudete and Oh Come Emmanual but haven’t always been successful. I’ve also moved Christmas baking from Christmas Eve to Epiphany instead of from Thanksgiving to Christmas.

We put up the creche during advent but add Mary and Joseph on Christmas eve and the baby Jesus on Christmas day and the wise men on Epiphany. I’ve even tried gradually moving the wise men closer to the creche as we get closer to epiphany.

It’s still sometimes a little odd for me to out of sync with the broader culture, as we have only done it for a few years now and I grew up with secular Christmas. Right when we are starting liturgical Christmas secular Christmas is ending.
 
Yes…we do!

Growing up we did not put up the tree until Christmas eve (which pretty much guaranteed a ‘Charlie Brown’ tree every year) and always had the calendar, table wreath and especially celebrating St. Nicholas day! We still do all these things.

We keep the tree up until the epiphany to this day, but sadly…the tree does go up earlier than I’d like. Like this past weekend 😦

Gotta compromise sometimes…
 
Rich_C said:
Recently, I have been looking for appropriate ways to express Advent’s penitential/preparatory theme, which I always overlooked before (despite the violet vestments, and suppression of the Gloria, I never noticed until last year). Also, there are the Winter Ember Days in late December. Everything else I know of has been well discussed already.
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Well pull out my arms and call me a clothespin! I learned something new today…I’m embarassed to admit I never really noticed before yesterday that we omitted the Gloria. I thought it was an oversight…

Thanks Rich!
 
Not to get too far off topic, but do any of you make a special cake for the Epiphany? We make one with 3 coins and a baby Jesus hidden inside. Whoever gets the coins has to do something nice for the person who gets the Jesus.
 
Yes, I’m going to make an Epiphany Cake this year. My French and Greek friends have different varieties, but I don’t particularly like the taste of either so I’m going with a nice fat chocolate cake but keeping the coins and crown.

We do Advent-y type things that other people have already discussed:
Advent candle (one with the numbers on the side where you burn down a number a day)
Advent wreath (I spent all day Saturday cutting holly and mistletoe)
Jesse Tree
extra effort put into lectio divina.
Ember Days

A nice tradition which a group of friends has is to have an Advent Walk. It’s a whole day, starting with Morning Prayer and ending with Mass, where we walk across the countryside together (stopping in a country pub for lunch) pausing periodically for scriptural readings, reflections and prayers. There’s some singing as we walk, but also some general catching up. And it means we’re deliberately sacrificing a whole free day of shopping.
 
Cider said:
It’s still sometimes a little odd for me to out of sync with the broader culture, as we have only done it for a few years now and I grew up with secular Christmas. Right when we are starting liturgical Christmas secular Christmas is ending.
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Yes, this does get to me too. On Dec 26 all the radio stations are done with Christmas music, everyone elses decorations are down, if you say “Merry Christmas!” to someone they look at you like you’ve got two heads. 😛
 
Hello All,

Advent is a great time. Lighting one candle a week apart makes you wait like we are waiting for his return now. Our time of going to Mass should be a everyday thing if possible. I wasn’t able to do it everyday when I was working but I can now. Catholic or the mass isn’t a noun but a verb. An action something that God has done for us and each time we go to mass we conferm the covetant that he has made with us until his
return. He says, unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood you have no part of me, and I want to make sure that I always have a part in him. Happy Advent All
 
I’m attending a very traditional parish and did not see an advent wreath/candles last Sunday. If I remember correctly, the wreath is of Lutheran origins, so maybe they don’t have one because of that. Or maybe they just don’t have it out for the Extraordinary Form? :confused: 🤷
 
Are you familiar with the Advent Prayer? It is said from the Feast of St. Andrew (Nov.29th until Christmas Eve. Say it once a day or 15 times or whenever your thoughts wander away from those things that are important. It is easy to remember.

Hail and blessed be the hour and the moment in which the Son of God was born of the most pure Virgin Mary, at midnight, in the piercing cold. In that hour, vouchsafe,o my God to hear my prayers and grant my petitions through the merits of Jesus and His Blessed Mother. Amen.

Peace, joy and love,
Uselessbeggar:gopray:
 
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