Celebrating Advent
A couple of days ago, I had an email from a reader asking how our family celebrates Advent. Thank you! I love nothing more than a good question to provide blog fodder.
We've done different things over the years. For some years, we did a Jesse Tree. If you aren't familiar with this idea, it is a small Christmas tree which has ornaments, one for each day of Advent. The ornaments correspond to the daily Bible readings which cover the whole scope of the Bible. It is a very similar idea to our Lenten tree which we do during Lent. I like that one better, which is probably why our use of a Jesse Tree fell by the wayside.
Other years, we read (or tried to read) Jotham's Journey. It is a story which has a section for each day of Advent. I say tried to read because we do our Advent celebrations after dinner. December can be crazy, and trying to keep up with essentially a chapter book proved to be too much for us.
What has remained constant over all these years is to celebrate the four Sundays of Advent by lighting our Advent candle wreath at dinner, reading the Scripture passages, saying a prayer, and then gathering around the piano to sing Christmas carols together. Some weeks we might celebrate Advent on a Monday, but we don't skip. Of course, if things don't always go as planned. I might envision perfection, but that isn't my life. In thinking about this post, I pulled up some old Advent posts and came across one describing one particularly disastrous Advent Sunday. You want to know what's funny? The Sunday I described wasn't all that long ago, and I have no recollection of it. Reading about it just makes me want to laugh. It is a good lesson in not taking things too seriously.
Of course we also do just fun things. We have our annual Christmas tree trimming party, complete with friends and lots of snacks. We make tamales. There are the stacks of Christmas books which come out as well as the Christmas movies. Some years we make gingerbread houses, others we decorate cookies. And there is nearly constant Christmas music playing somewhere.
I discovered that I have written a lot about Advent, preparing for Christmas, and the liturgical calendar. I love the rhythm of the church (liturgical) calendar, and while I love our new church, I do miss the liturgy that is a part of our Evanston church. (For those who read too much older British fiction, I am an odd combination of both high church and low church tendencies.) I particularly miss liturgy during Advent and Lent.
All of this got me to thinking... what if I tried something new for Advent? What if I took on the challenge of responding to the daily lectionary readings for the season of Advent? It might provide the structure I am missing, and would also be a new writing challenge. (I have been feeling a little stale in the writing department recently.) The idea of it makes me kind of excited. It could be a huge flop, or I could decide to keep going for the whole church year. I don't have any idea how it will all play out.
As I've been thinking about it, I think I will create a separate blog for writing my responses. Don't worry, I'll keep writing here. This would just be in addition. If I were to try to do it on this blog, it would become hard to also share other things, and not everyone is wildly excited by the idea of lectionary readings. I'll post links, but you can choose to take a look. I may end up writing just for myself, and that would be okay, too. And if what I write ends up being um... substandard... then that's probably just as well.
I'll spend the next few days thinking about it and figuring out how it will work. I'll let you know when there is something concrete I can share. In the meantime, do take a moment and click through to this old post, I personally think it's worth it.
Advent Hope
We've done different things over the years. For some years, we did a Jesse Tree. If you aren't familiar with this idea, it is a small Christmas tree which has ornaments, one for each day of Advent. The ornaments correspond to the daily Bible readings which cover the whole scope of the Bible. It is a very similar idea to our Lenten tree which we do during Lent. I like that one better, which is probably why our use of a Jesse Tree fell by the wayside.
Other years, we read (or tried to read) Jotham's Journey. It is a story which has a section for each day of Advent. I say tried to read because we do our Advent celebrations after dinner. December can be crazy, and trying to keep up with essentially a chapter book proved to be too much for us.
What has remained constant over all these years is to celebrate the four Sundays of Advent by lighting our Advent candle wreath at dinner, reading the Scripture passages, saying a prayer, and then gathering around the piano to sing Christmas carols together. Some weeks we might celebrate Advent on a Monday, but we don't skip. Of course, if things don't always go as planned. I might envision perfection, but that isn't my life. In thinking about this post, I pulled up some old Advent posts and came across one describing one particularly disastrous Advent Sunday. You want to know what's funny? The Sunday I described wasn't all that long ago, and I have no recollection of it. Reading about it just makes me want to laugh. It is a good lesson in not taking things too seriously.
Of course we also do just fun things. We have our annual Christmas tree trimming party, complete with friends and lots of snacks. We make tamales. There are the stacks of Christmas books which come out as well as the Christmas movies. Some years we make gingerbread houses, others we decorate cookies. And there is nearly constant Christmas music playing somewhere.
I discovered that I have written a lot about Advent, preparing for Christmas, and the liturgical calendar. I love the rhythm of the church (liturgical) calendar, and while I love our new church, I do miss the liturgy that is a part of our Evanston church. (For those who read too much older British fiction, I am an odd combination of both high church and low church tendencies.) I particularly miss liturgy during Advent and Lent.
All of this got me to thinking... what if I tried something new for Advent? What if I took on the challenge of responding to the daily lectionary readings for the season of Advent? It might provide the structure I am missing, and would also be a new writing challenge. (I have been feeling a little stale in the writing department recently.) The idea of it makes me kind of excited. It could be a huge flop, or I could decide to keep going for the whole church year. I don't have any idea how it will all play out.
As I've been thinking about it, I think I will create a separate blog for writing my responses. Don't worry, I'll keep writing here. This would just be in addition. If I were to try to do it on this blog, it would become hard to also share other things, and not everyone is wildly excited by the idea of lectionary readings. I'll post links, but you can choose to take a look. I may end up writing just for myself, and that would be okay, too. And if what I write ends up being um... substandard... then that's probably just as well.
I'll spend the next few days thinking about it and figuring out how it will work. I'll let you know when there is something concrete I can share. In the meantime, do take a moment and click through to this old post, I personally think it's worth it.
Advent Hope
Comments