Advent

Based on Wikipedia: Advent

Picture a medieval German pastor in 1839, surrounded by restless children who simply cannot wait for Christmas. Johann Hinrich Wichern had a problem that every parent knows: the endless "how many days until Christmas?" that begins somewhere around Halloween and doesn't let up. His solution was elegant. He built a wooden ring and studded it with candles—nineteen small red ones for the weekdays, four large white ones for the Sundays. Each morning, the children would light another small candle. Each Sunday, a big one. The anticipation became tangible, visible, measurable.

That wooden ring became the Advent wreath.

And that impulse—to mark time, to make waiting meaningful, to transform impatience into ritual—captures something essential about Advent itself. It's a season built around the peculiar human experience of anticipation.

What Advent Actually Is

The word comes from the Latin adventus, meaning "coming" or "arrival." But which coming? This is where it gets interesting. For Christians, Advent anticipates three different arrivals simultaneously: the historical birth of Jesus in Bethlehem roughly two thousand years ago, the spiritual reception of Christ into a believer's heart right now, and the future return of Christ at the end of time.

That's an unusual theological move—collapsing past, present, and future into a single four-week period. It means Advent isn't merely a countdown to a birthday party. It's a meditation on time itself, on how endings and beginnings interweave, on what it means to wait for something you believe has already happened and will happen again.

The season kicks off on the fourth Sunday before Christmas, landing somewhere between November 27th and December 3rd depending on how the calendar falls. This Sunday—Advent Sunday—also marks the beginning of the liturgical year for Western Christians. Think of it as New Year's Day for the church calendar, which explains why the energy of the season feels more like a beginning than a prelude to an ending.

The Eastern Difference

If you wander into an Eastern Orthodox or Oriental Orthodox church in November, you'll find something related but distinctly different: the Nativity Fast. It lasts forty days, starting on November 15th, and the emphasis falls heavily on fasting and penitence rather than the theological three-in-one anticipation of Western Advent.

The Eastern churches also don't use the Greek word parousia—the New Testament term for Christ's Second Coming—in their preparatory services. This linguistic choice matters because it signals a different focus. Where Western Advent stretches toward the cosmic and eschatological, the Eastern Nativity Fast stays grounded in preparing specifically for the celebration of Jesus's birth.

Neither approach is wrong. They're different answers to the same question: what do you do with the weeks before Christmas?

How It All Began (Or Didn't)

Here's an honest confession from scholars: nobody really knows when Advent started. Liturgical historian J. Neil Alexander puts it bluntly—it's "impossible to claim with confidence a credible explanation of the origin of Advent."

What we do know is that something resembling Advent existed by around 480 CE. The Council of Tours in 567 ordered monks to fast every day in December until Christmas, which suggests the concept of Advent preparation was already familiar enough to formalize.

But the real architect of early Advent practice might have been Bishop Perpetuus of Tours, who died in 490. He directed his diocese to fast three times per week from Saint Martin's Day on November 11th until Christmas. This forty-day fasting period earned the nickname "Saint Martin's Lent" or the "Nativity Fast," echoing the structure of the Lenten fast before Easter.

The practice spread slowly. The Council of Macon in 581 adopted it. Soon all of France was fasting three days a week from Martin's Day to Christmas. The most devout exceeded even these requirements and fasted every single day of Advent.

The Great Softening

Medieval Christians took fasting seriously in ways that modern observers might find almost incomprehensible. But even in the Middle Ages, Advent fasting began to slip.

By the thirteenth century, the practice wasn't commonly observed, though some still kept it. When King Louis IX of France—later Saint Louis—was canonized, his bull of canonization specifically praised his zeal for the Advent fast, which tells you that such devotion had become exceptional rather than expected. The fast shrank to the period between Saint Andrew's Day (November 30th) and Christmas, partly because Andrew's feast was more universally celebrated than Martin's.

When Pope Urban V became pope in 1362, he imposed abstinence on the papal court but didn't mention fasting. A subtle but significant distinction: abstinence means avoiding certain foods (typically meat), while fasting means limiting the quantity of all food. The requirement was getting easier.

The Roman Catholic Church eventually abolished the precept of Advent fasting entirely, though the exact date is lost to history—it was certainly gone by 1917 when the new Code of Canon Law was promulgated. Advent remained a season of penitence but no longer one of mandatory physical deprivation.

Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches, however, never softened. They still observe forty days of fasting before Christmas, maintaining a practice that Western Christianity abandoned centuries ago.

The Color Question

Walk into most Western churches during Advent and you'll see violet or purple everywhere—draped over altars, worn by clergy, wrapped around candles. This has been standard since roughly the thirteenth century, though Pope Innocent III once declared black the proper Advent color. (He was overruled by tradition.)

But here's where it gets interesting: there's a quiet rebellion underway. Some churches have started using blue instead.

The argument goes like this: purple is associated with solemnity, mourning, and penitence, which fits Lent perfectly. But Advent isn't Lent. Advent is hopeful. Advent anticipates joy. Shouldn't its color reflect that difference?

Proponents of blue often call it "Sarum blue," claiming it was used at Salisbury Cathedral in medieval England. The Sarum Rite was indeed influential, and many of its practices were revived during the Anglo-Catholic Oxford Movement in the nineteenth century. But Anglican liturgist Percy Dearmer, while not objecting to blue, gently punctured the historical claims: "the so-called Sarum uses are really one-half made up from the fancy of nineteenth-century ritualists."

In reality, the actual Sarum Rite probably used red for Advent—or possibly a red-purple called "murray." Different dioceses used different colors. The neat narrative of continuous Sarum blue tradition is largely invented.

None of which has stopped the blue movement. The Lutheran Book of Worship lists blue as preferred for Advent. Methodist and Presbyterian books identify either purple or blue as appropriate. The Church of Sweden has used blue since at least the eighth century. For many Protestant churches, switching to blue has become a way of emphasizing Advent's character as a season of hope rather than penitence.

The Roman Catholic Church, for its part, has stuck with violet. Blue appears only rarely in Latin Catholicism, and when it does, it's associated with veneration of the Virgin Mary, not with Advent specifically.

Eastern Christianity uses red during the Nativity Fast, with gold as an alternative.

Gaudete Sunday: The Pink Exception

On the third Sunday of Advent, something shifts. The violet vestments can be swapped for rose—not quite pink, but close. The candle lit that day on the Advent wreath is rose-colored rather than purple. The name for this Sunday is Gaudete, Latin for "Rejoice," taken from the opening word of the traditional entrance antiphon at Mass.

This mirrors Laetare Sunday, the fourth Sunday of Lent, which offers a similar brief lifting of penitential mood. Both days serve as reminders that the difficult waiting period is more than halfway done. Joy is approaching.

There's something psychologically astute about this. Any long period of waiting benefits from a midpoint marker, a moment to acknowledge progress, a temporary release of tension before the final stretch. Gaudete Sunday provides exactly that.

The Silence of Leipzig

Johann Sebastian Bach spent most of his career in Leipzig, and during those years he composed only one cantata for Advent. Just one. This seems almost criminal for a composer who wrote cantatas for every possible occasion.

The explanation reveals something important about Advent: Leipzig observed it as a "silent time." Elaborate cantata music was permitted only on the first of the four Advent Sundays. The rest of the season maintained a musical austerity.

Earlier in his career, working in Weimar, Bach had more freedom. There he composed several Advent cantatas, including "Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland" (Now Come, Savior of the Gentiles) and the famous "Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben" (Heart and Mouth and Deed and Life). The contrast between Weimar and Leipzig shows how differently various communities interpreted Advent's character.

This musical restraint extends to the Mass itself during Advent. The Gloria—that exuberant hymn of praise beginning "Glory to God in the highest"—is omitted throughout the season. The idea is that when the angels' song returns at Christmas, it will have the effect of novelty, of something genuinely new breaking into the world. Composers who wrote Mass settings specifically for Lent, which similarly omits the Gloria, found their works also suitable for Advent.

The "O" Antiphons

The final days before Christmas—December 17th through the 24th—are called the "Late Advent Weekdays," and they carry special significance marked by the Great Advent "O Antiphons."

An antiphon is a short text sung before and after a psalm or canticle. The "O Antiphons" are seven ancient texts, each beginning with "O" followed by a title for the coming Messiah: O Wisdom, O Lord of Israel, O Root of Jesse, O Key of David, O Dayspring, O King of Nations, O Emmanuel. Each one is sung at Vespers (evening prayer) in the Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Lutheran traditions.

These antiphons form the basis for one of the most beloved Advent hymns: "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel." Each verse of that hymn derives from one of the antiphons. When you sing "O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel," you're participating in a tradition stretching back to at least the eighth century.

There's a hidden pattern in the antiphons too. If you take the first letter of each Latin title (Sapientia, Adonai, Radix, Clavis, Oriens, Rex, Emmanuel) and read them backwards, they spell "ero cras"—Latin for "I will be [there] tomorrow." A medieval acrostic hiding a promise in the structure of the liturgy itself.

The Customs of Common Folk

Advent has always generated folk practices alongside official liturgy, some charming, some bizarre.

In northern England, there was once a custom—now extinct—for poor women to carry "Advent images" from house to house. These were two dolls dressed to represent Jesus and the Virgin Mary. Householders were expected to give a halfpenny coin upon viewing the dolls, and failure to receive the doll-bearers before Christmas Eve was thought to bring bad luck.

In Normandy, farmers employed children under twelve to run through fields and orchards carrying torches, setting fire to bundles of straw. This was believed to drive out vermin that might damage crops. Fire, light, the coming of warmth in the darkest season—the symbolism wrote itself.

Italian shepherds brought bagpipes. In Rome, during the last days of Advent, the pifferari—bagpipe players from Calabria—would come into the city and play before shrines of Mary. The tradition connected to the belief that shepherds played pipes when they came to the manger in Bethlehem. The sound of bagpipes became, for Romans, the sound of Advent.

In Frankfurt-Bornheim, starting in 2011, volunteers have created an Advent labyrinth made of 2,500 tea-light candles for the third Saturday of Advent. People walk the labyrinth in silence, a meditative practice made tangible with tiny flames.

The Wreath, Decoded

Pastor Wichern's 1839 invention has evolved considerably. Modern Advent wreaths typically have only four candles—the nineteen small daily ones have been abandoned. The candles are usually three purple (or violet) and one pink (or rose), corresponding to the three ordinary Advent Sundays and Gaudete Sunday.

The wreath itself carries symbolic weight. Made traditionally of evergreen branches—fir, laurel, holly—bound in a circle, it represents eternity (the unbroken circle), victory (the crown shape), and life persisting through winter (the evergreen). The fir tree symbolizes strength. Laurel represents victory over sin and suffering. Holly recalls the crown of thorns. None of these plants lose their leaves, pointing toward the eternal nature of God.

The flames represent Christmas light approaching, hope pushing back against December darkness. Red ribbons, sometimes woven through the branches, add color and may represent the blood of Christ.

Some families and churches add a fifth candle in the center of the wreath—white, called the Christ candle—to be lit on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day itself. This transforms the wreath from a countdown device into something that points beyond itself to what the waiting was always for.

The Commercial Calendar

Outside church circles, Advent has been largely reduced to the Advent calendar—that cardboard rectangle with numbered doors, each hiding a chocolate or small toy, opened one per day through December.

There's nothing wrong with this. Wichern would probably approve, since his original innovation was precisely about making abstract waiting concrete for children. But something gets lost when the calendar becomes merely a chocolate-delivery mechanism divorced from any larger meaning.

The same might be said for Advent candles—pillar candles marked with numbered sections, one burned each day. They serve the same function as the calendar: making time visible, marking progress toward a destination.

For many households, the first day of Advent now marks when the Christmas tree goes up and decorations come out. This is actually closer to traditional liturgical practice than the American habit of decorating right after Thanksgiving. Some churches still perform a "Hanging of the Greens" ceremony at the start of Advent, formally decorating the sanctuary for the season.

The Waiting Game

What does Advent teach? Perhaps this: that waiting isn't empty time to be endured but can be shaped into something meaningful. The candles, the colors, the music, the fasting, the antiphons—all of these are technologies for inhabiting anticipation rather than merely suffering through it.

Modern life tends to collapse waiting into distraction. We scroll through phones in checkout lines. We binge entire television seasons rather than wait a week between episodes. We pay extra for overnight shipping. The capacity for sustained, meaningful anticipation has atrophied.

Advent offers an alternative model. It says: here is a period of waiting, and we will furnish it with beauty. We will light candles in the darkness. We will sing ancient songs. We will move from purple to rose as a sign of joy approaching. We will name what we're waiting for—O Wisdom, O Emmanuel—and we will wait for it together.

Whether or not one shares the theological convictions underlying Advent, there's something worth recovering in its approach to time. Not every moment needs to be filled with content. Not every delay needs to be eliminated. Sometimes the waiting is the point.

The children in Wichern's care understood this, watching the flames multiply on that wooden ring. Each lit candle brought Christmas closer, yes. But each candle also made the present moment—this particular evening in this particular room—more luminous. The light wasn't only pointing forward. It was shining now.