My Advent / Christmas Traditions

Today marks the beginning of the last week of Advent the time of year that where the church enters into a time of expectation before Christmas. This time of year is filled with rituals and traditions for many people. As a student of rituals, not only do I love my own rituals, but also the rituals that others do. I thought that today I would share with you a few of the rituals and traditions that my family has adopted for Advent and Christmas. I would love it if you told me a few of your own traditions in the comments below as well.

ADVENT TRADITIONS

• The Advent wreath – In out house we have 2 advent wreaths. These are sets of four candles that represent the four weeks of advent. Most of the candles are purple, but the third week’s candle is pink. The third weeks candle is pink because the traditional entrance verse for the service begins with a call to rejoice and the church marks a break in the penitential nature nature of the season with a touch of the joy of the promise (a similar shift also occurs in the third week of lent). We light these candles before dinner and sing “oh come oh come Emanuel”
• Advent bible readings. I read a little bit of the Bible to my family each day and talk a bit about what is going on. Doing this I retell the salvation history as recorded in the Hebrew Bible. We start in Genesis and move through until we tell the story of Jesus’ birth on Christmas eve.
• St. Nicholas Day – In out house we started doing gifts on St. Nicholas day. It allows us to have some time to share with one another without massive extended family crazyness that comes with travels back to Michigan to see out families, my son does crafts and we leave candy in shoes
• Advent book – We have also been doing daily readings at night from a book that my wife bought for our 2 year old. He’s been loving them.

(In the past I have done some other things that I really liked. I love doing a Jesse tree for example, and I really like advent calendars. Do you have any advent traditions that you really love?)

CHRISTMAS TRADITIONS

• Caroling – I love to go Caroling. I generally try to find a group to go with around a neighborhood. The traditional carols are my favorite Christmas songs and its really fun to sing them to strangers with a group.
• The Nativity set – In our house the nativity set is something that progresses slowly. It starts out with an angel speaking to Mary at the beginning of advent, and we also have a prophet figure proclaiming messianic hopes from afar. As time goes on more figures appear. Joesph and a donkey arrive and shepherds begin to gather nearby. On Christmas eve mary and Joeseph arrive at the cave and on Christmas day Jesus appears in the Manger. During the 12 days of Christmas the magi slowly approach and they arrive at epiphany 
• The doorpost blessing: On Epiphany we get blessed chalk and mark our doors with 20 + C + M + B + 13 (the first and last sets of numbers indicate the year that has just begun.) This The CMB stands for both “Christus Mansionem Benedicat” (meaning Christ bless this house)or the traditional western names for the wise-men (Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar.)
• Icons – I pray with my son at our icon corner before we go to bed. During the Christmas season we focus on out nativity icon, and then at Epiphany we focus on the baptism of Jesus, which is a feast that has historically been celebrated on Epiphany in the church, and is still the primary emphasis of the day in the Eastern Christian churches.
• The 12 days gifts – This is a tradition that my parents do and since we often stay with them over the 12 days of Christmas we also do it. Small gifts are placed in stockings hung by the stairs for each of the 12 days of Christmas. I have found this to be a fun way to keep the feast of Christmas fun for kids for the whole 12 days.