When I was much younger (but old enough for some serious crafting), I designed a two-dimensional Advent wreath from construction paper and thumbtacked it to my bedroom wall. Each Sunday during the season, I took a carefully cut, yellow paper flame and stuck it on the appropriately colored paper candle—each of which was nestled in green, paper holly leaves—where it stayed “lit” for the week. This was the last time I remember consistently lighting an Advent wreath.
Don’t get me wrong, I have an Advent wreath: a small, spare gold circle, about six inches in diameter. I bought the wreath and the traditional four tapers—three purple and one pink— maybe 12 years ago in the gift shop of my old parish in New York. I was in my late 20s, and I remember feeling excited to have a wreath of my own, even if it was one sized for a New York City apartment.
I have unpacked the wreath for Advent every year since then. I place the candles, and I resolve that this is the year I will light the wreath every night. Or at least every Sunday. One measure of my success is this: I still have the original candles. They are shorter, yes, but not so short that they need replacing.
The sparseness of my Advent wreath is designed to inspire its owner to add evergreen boughs annually, perhaps freshly cut, as a reminder of the everlasting nature of God’s love and existence. I love the idea of creating an Advent wreath afresh each year. But this year, for the first two Sundays of Advent, the wreath sat unadorned on our dining room table, while some green sprigs lay in a pile on a plastic table on our front porch. When I finally attempted to arrange them around the wreath, they seemed to sprout in every direction. “Does this look crazy?” I asked my husband. He paused long enough that I knew the answer.
Lighting the Advent wreath is a beautiful tradition, and I'm hoping that how I approach it is more important than how often.
The crazy green branches have stayed, however, because I believe that the symbolism of the Advent wreath still has value, even if I don’t light it as often as I aim to. Like the Christmas tree, the Advent wreath has some roots in pre-Christian traditions, with its green branches and its candles bringing life and light to the darkness of winter. A German Lutheran tradition embraced by Catholics, the Advent wreath remains a simple yet powerful reminder of the season.
Each of the candles bears a specific symbolism, too. While the pink candle, known as the Shepherd’s Candle and symbolizing joy on Gaudete Sunday, is perhaps the most notable of the bunch, the three purple candles also have names: the Prophecy candle, symbolizing hope; the Bethlehem candle, a reminder of the Holy Family’s journey; and the Angel’s candle, symbolizing love.
Joy. Hope. Journey. Love. These are not themes meant to add to a person’s stress levels. There is no Big Advent that is out to get me. It’s often suggested as an antidote to the frenzy of shopping and cooking and travel that come with the Christmas season. I am not an Advent purist—our Christmas tree was up the weekend after Thanksgiving, as were the lighted reindeer in our front yard—but each year, I feel pressure to do Advent “right.” Perhaps this is in part because I think it’s a chance to re-center Christ in my life, to recharge my spiritual life or to engage and nurture the Catholic imagination of my children in new ways. But I realize that much of the pressure to perfect these Advent traditions in my home originates in my head. The pressure I’m putting on myself gets in the way of doing any of the traditions “right.”
Advent is a season that asks us to slow down, to make note of the present moment while also anticipating something greater, something brighter. Lighting the Advent wreath sounds simple, but it inherently involves some level of slowness, even caution; it means relative stillness if only for the sake of safety. It’s just that I have trouble making a habit of this. I think some part of me believes that if I can just light those candles every night, the peace and joyful anticipation will automatically follow.
But sometimes I cannot find the matches, sometimes I eat dinner standing at the kitchen counter, sometimes we are rushing from school pick-up to basketball practice to dance lessons to Cub Scouts, and sometimes the kids are going crazy and my 3-year-old almost catches her hair on fire, and the wreath seems more of a hazard than a statement of faith.
There is real beauty in celebrating family traditions around the liturgical seasons each year. But there is also beauty in being able to say, not this year. Maybe the new family tradition is taking time to recognize and observe Advent in some ways, but not feeling compelled to do so in every way. Our faith includes many beautiful Advent customs, and slowly, I am realizing that the ones I choose, or the frequency with which I do them are not as important as how I approach them. The key is to do things deliberately.
This past summer, on a whim, I bought a different sort of Advent wreath, which was on sale at the time. Its base is constructed of chunky wooden pieces that fit together like a puzzle and are painted like evergreen boughs. In four of the pieces, there are holes to hold up the wooden “candles” that themselves hold circular wooden flames in little notches on top. After it arrived, I stored it away on a shelf in the basement. I remembered my purchase just in time for this Advent season.
Amid negotiations over who would eventually put the flame on the pink candle, my three children opened the box and worked together without much fighting to assemble the wooden wreath. And in what is perhaps an Advent miracle, the wreath has sat peacefully on a small kid-sized table in our living room ever since. No part of it has been chewed on or used as a weapon. We have remembered to add the additional flames each Sunday. It’s been a lovely addition to our Advent traditions.
The new wreath is not made of perfectly arranged, fresh evergreen boughs, but there is something to be said for its perpetual, painted flames “shining” forth from a table that typically houses bits of dried play-doh. When I catch a glimpse of it as I walk through the room, I am reminded that the light at the heart of the Advent season is present whether or not I light any candles. I only need to take the time to recognize that light and remember that it might look different from year to year. With that in mind, I joyfully await what each new season will bring.
