Advent preparations

Reposting from last year - plus adding a few ideas.

Monday, November 24, 2003
Advent
Our old advent wreath finally broke down after being used more than half a decade, so I'm making a new one. It's not quite done yet - I ran out of greenery, but it's coming along...

I used a foam wreath form, one garland of greenery (n.b. the $2.99 garland from Hobby Lobby is puny - I'm going to have to buy another one), a bunch of holly, and bunch of ivy. I cut the branches off of the garland, and cut the holly and ivy into managable sizes, then stuck everything into the wreath form. It's pretty easy to get good looking results, and only costs about $20 to make, including the candles.

We have used the devotions from Christ in Christmas: A Family Advent Celebration for 10 or 11 years now. The kids love it so much that earlier this year, when Mosey heard Mike and me talking about making a few changes in our Advent celebration, she nearly broke down crying! They love doing the same things each year.

On the first Sunday of Advent, Saturday night for us, we turn out all the lights and the children try to walk around the living room without bumping into each other or the furniture. Then Mike quotes from Isaiah 9:2 "The people walking in darkness have seen a great light," and strikes the match to light the first candle.

This year we'd like to sing more Advent hymns during the season and save the really bright Christmas hymns for the Twelve Days of Christmas, but I only a few Advent hymns. Any ideas?

In the comments to that post, Kristen listed several of her favorite Advent hymns.

We first celebrated Advent in our second year of marriage when we were always broke, so the first Advent wreath I made was four white votive candles and a white pillar sitting on a round tray. No candle holders, and the tray was a wedding gift - total cost, probably less than $5. I don't think I even added any greenery since we were living in an apartment and besides being reluctant to cut greenery not my own, all we had were crape myrtles, and I doubt I would have used those, traditionalist that I am, but you see, you can put together a reasonable Advent "wreath" for very little money.

Also that year, we had not yet bought the book we are currently using, and I had no idea what were the traditions associated with each candle, so we just made up our own thing. For the first week, we read the creation and fall account with the first promise of the Messiah, but I don't remember what we did after that. If anyone is not able to buy a book of Advent devotions, I'd be happy to list the Scriptures and hymns used in our Advent book.

Two other good resources are the lectionaries used by the Reformed Episcopal Church and the Episcopal Church - USA. They both list readings from the Psalms, the Old Testament, Epistles, and Gospels for each day of the year. The REC's lectionary also includes a collect, or prayer, for each week. The daily lectionary of the ECUSA begins on page 27. The ECUSA prayer book has two sets of collects, traditional, and contemporary.