Advent Sunday.

Four Sundays before Christmas, the advent season begins with Advent Sunday. That’d be today, 1 December 2024. (Next year it’ll be 30 November. It moves.)

Our word advent comes from the Latin advenire, “come to [someplace].” Who’s coming to where? That’d be Jesus, formally coming to earth. We’re not talking about the frequent appearances he makes here and there to various Christians and pre-Christians. It refers to the two formal appearances:

1. His first coming, when he was born in the year 7BC, which is what we celebrate with Christmas.
2. His second coming, when he takes possession of his kingdom. Hasn’t happened yet. Maybe it’ll happen within our lifetimes. Maybe not.

Many American Evangelicals have lost sight of the advent tradition, figuring it’s only a Roman Catholic thing—as if American Catholics haven’t likewise lost sight of this tradition. In the United States we’ve permitted popular culture to define the Christmas season for us. And of course popular culture much prefers Mammonism. Gotta buy stuff for Christmas! Gotta boost the retail economy. How much did people spend on Black Friday weekend? How early did you put up your Christmas lights and inflatables? Gotta buy seasonal Christmas food and drinks, and go to Christmas parties and give Christmas gifts, and fly home for Christmas to be with family, or at least send them expensive gift cards so they can go shopping.

Popular culture reduces the advent season to advent calendars: Those 25-day calendars which count down from 1 December (regardless of when Advent Sunday actually starts). Every day you get a little piece of chocolate-flavored shortening, unless you bought the calendars made with the good chocolate, with the cacao beans hand-picked by slave labor. Or bought one of those advent calendars with different treats—like Lego minifigures, or a different-flavored coffee pod each day (admittedly I really like this one), or a daily bottle of wine—

It actually turns out these bottles are table markers, but this photo’s been making the rounds of the internet described as an advent calendar. Still, you can easily find wine advent calendars on almost every wine-seller’s website. Pinterest

—which, if you drink it all by yourself, means you’re an alcoholic. These 25-day calendars are pretty much the only “advent” most American Christians know about. And on the years where Advent Sunday falls in November, they’ve no idea they’ve been shortchanged.

As for the rest of the Christmas season: Nobody’s actually getting ready for Jesus. We’re getting ready for Christmas. We’re getting ready for pageants and parties and gift-giving. Wrong focus and attitude—meaning more humbug and hypocrisy, more Santa Claus and reindeer and snowmen somehow brought to life without the aid of evil spirits.

And less Jesus and good fruit and hope.

You see the problem. It’s why so many Christians dislike Christmas. Too much fake sentiment. Too much “magic.” Too many feigned happy smiles when really they don’t like what so much of the “season” is about.

So lemme recommend an alternative: Let’s skip the Christmas season, and focus on the advent season. Let’s look to Jesus. He’s coming back, y’know. Could return at any time.

The advent candles.

Yep, there are some traditional advent practices. Not many, so there’s lots of room for us to improvise if we wanna.

First of all there’s the color scheme: Purple. Not red and green. I like red and green too, but if we’re doing advent, the traditional liturgical color is purple. ’Cause Jesus is our king, and ancient kings wore purple. (Ancient purple dye was crazy expensive, so usually it was only the king who could afford it. Although some of them banned other people from wearing it too; it was their color.) So if you’re not a big fan of red and green, that’s okay. Hope you like purple!

Then there’s the advent wreath. That’s a relatively new tradition, started by Lutherans in the 1600s. (Yep, it’s not a Catholic thing. Although today’s Catholics do advent wreaths too.) Ancient Greek and Roman kings wore olive-leaf wreaths around their heads, like Olympic athletes; yep, that’s the “crown” Jesus is gonna give his people when he returns. Rv 2.10 That’s the στέφανος/stéfanos, “crown,” you see in the New Testament. That’s what all the Christmas wreaths are about.

An advent wreath lies flat on a table, and has four candles in it, which represent the four Sundays before Christmas. Although there was this one German who made a huge wreath, put six little candles inbetween each of the four candles, and lit a new candle for each day before Christmas. That’s probably way too many candles, and your local fire department would discourage such behavior unless they’re electric candles.

Originally the candles were white, but lately they’ve been purple or pink. Really they can be any color—white, purple, pink, red, blue, striped like candy canes, whatever. Often there’s a fifth, a big white one, put in the center of the wreath; sometimes it’s used to light the others, or it represents Jesus and is only lit on Christmas.

Like I said, the four candles represent the four Sundays. But Christians have decided that’s just not good enough, so we’ve attached all sorts of other special meanings to them. I’ve heard preachers claim, “So here’s what each of the candles mean,” and preach whole sermons on “their historical meaning.” And none of these “historical meanings” are true. Seriously. The Lutherans never formally declared the candles have any special meanings. None of the meanings we’ve come up with since, are consistent across the churches.

Here are some of the meanings people claim for the candles:

• Hope, peace, joy, love.
• Hope, preparation, joy, love. (If you’re a bigger fan of the flurry of preparation than peace, I guess.)
• Promise, prophecy, peace, adoration.
• Hope of the people, the prophets, John the baptist, Jesus’s mother Mary.
• Prophecy, the journey to Bethlehem, shepherds visiting, angels rejoicing.
• Expectation, hope, joy, purity.
• Three purple candles for penitence, one pink one for joy. (For those who figure we oughta be more penitent.)
• Prophecy, faith, joy, peace.
• Death, judgment, heaven, hell. (The dark Christian advent, I suppose.)

In the Orthodox Church, advent actually starts six weeks before Christmas, ’cause they fast before Christmas same as they do bore Easter. It’s like a Christmas version of Lent. So when they do advent wreaths, they have six candles for the six Sundays. Again, the meanings of the six candles vary. But one interpretation I’ve heard is faith, hope, love, peace, repentance, communion. More candles means they can cover more bases.

I find most of the advent-wreath resources point to that first list—hope, peace, joy, and love. Unless you’re Catholic; then it’s the one with Jesus’s mom in it, because Catholics love Mary. Wouldn’t be Catholic without Mary.

Custom is to light another candle each Sunday, then have some sort of advent devotional time. Sometimes based on the candle’s theme—whatever theme you’ve assigned it—but sometimes it’s just generically on the idea of Jesus’s first or second advent.

There are two additional kinds of advent candles:

1. There’s the christingle, which is usually a candle shoved into an orange. Sometimes it’s decorated, sometimes not. It’s a Protestant custom, started by Moravians in the 1700s. It’s meant to represent Jesus as the light of the world. The candle represents the light, the orange represents the world, and the other decorations represent… well, our very human need to overdo things, I guess.
2. And there’s the single advent candle, which is a candle marked with the days of 1 December to 25 December. Each day you burn it down to the next day… then probably fetch your chocolate from the commercial advent calendar. I would suggest drinking your advent-calendar wine too, but y’might get too tipsy, forget to put out the advent candle, and let it burn through multiple days.

For those who are nervous about fire, there are always electric and glowstick alternatives.

Get ready for the Lord!

Of course hewing too legalistically to advent-wreath themes (especially since there’s no actual standard!), or ditching ’em in favor of commercial alternatives, are an irritating way to prep for Christmas. The point of advent is to be the antidote to all the rampant materialism.

We’re to focus on Jesus! Not social custom. Not even gift-giving. Not all the stuff we’re expected to do every single year. Jesus. We claim he’s the reason for the season; now it’s time to take this saying seriously, instead of using it as an excuse to browbeat clerks into telling us “Merry Christmas” like we prefer.

Part of getting ready for Jesus’s second advent is to stop being this sort of argumentative, frenzied, self-focused consumer. Start behaving like he’s coming back! ’Cause he is. Maybe not for the whole world just yet; he’s still trying to save everybody. But at some point you’re gonna die. As will I. As will everyone. So he’s coming for you personally. Are you ready?

Luke 12.35-48 GNT

35“Be ready for whatever comes, dressed for action and with your lamps lit, 36like servants who are waiting for their master to come back from a wedding feast. When he comes and knocks, they will open the door for him at once. 37How happy are those servants whose master finds them awake and ready when he returns! I tell you, he will take off his coat, have them sit down, and will wait on them. 38How happy they are if he finds them ready, even if he should come at midnight or even later! 39And you can be sure that if the owner of a house knew the time when the thief would come, he would not let the thief break into his house. 40And you, too, must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you are not expecting him.”

41Peter said, “Lord, does this parable apply to us, or do you mean it for everyone?”

42The Lord answered, “Who, then, is the faithful and wise servant? He is the one that his master will put in charge, to run the household and give the other servants their share of the food at the proper time. 43How happy that servant is if his master finds him doing this when he comes home! 44Indeed, I tell you, the master will put that servant in charge of all his property. 45But if that servant says to himself that his master is taking a long time to come back and if he begins to beat the other servants, both the men and the women, and eats and drinks and gets drunk, 46then the master will come back one day when the servant does not expect him and at a time he does not know. The master will cut him in pieces and make him share the fate of the disobedient.

47“The servant who knows what his master wants him to do, but does not get himself ready and do it, will be punished with a heavy whipping. 48But the servant who does not know what his master wants, and yet does something for which he deserves a whipping, will be punished with a light whipping. Much is required from the person to whom much is given; much more is required from the person to whom much more is given.”

Do you know what our master expects of you? ’Cause he’s coming when we won’t expect.