Advent
By Greg Gilbert December 3, 2007
My wife had a great idea the other night: We decided to make an advent wreath to help our son understand why there’s all this to-do about Christmas. My son’s five years old now, which means he is highly excited by the prospect of all the gifts, cookies and candy that are in store for him over the next few weeks. But part of our job as Christian parents is to try to pry his little eyes off all that and refocus them on Jesus.
We have several traditions that we do as a family at Christmas, and the advent wreath we made will probably become part of that. As is my wont, I did some internet-research on the advent wreath, and found that there’s no real clarity regarding its origin, and no dominant tradition about its symbolism, either—people seem to kind of apply whatever symbolism they want to it. Though the tradition seems very medieval at first glance, most likely it started with German Lutherans sometime soon after the Reformation, but it only took real shape in the latter part of the nineteenth century and was then picked up by Roman Catholics and remains a significant part of Roman Catholic devotion to this day. As for the symbolism, some people say the purple candles are for royalty, others that they’re for mourning. The pink candle could be a number of things: either a mixture of the purple of mourning and the white of rejoicing, or a reference to an old Roman Catholic tradition of the pope giving roses as gifts during this season.
At any rate, there’s nothing in the tradition of the wreath that specifically ties it to the parts of Roman Catholic theology that I do not believe, and with a few “Protestantizing” changes and additions, it’s a great way to focus my son’s attention on something other than the gifts under the tree.
Last night, we lit the first candle, read from Isaiah 60, and thanked God for sending Jesus, the Light of the world, to us. My son, as usual, was most interested in which candle he was going to be able to light, but I have no doubt that he’ll remember some of this, and that in itself is worth it.