Paper handicrafts for Christmas, and more Sleepers Awake 2: Snowflakes edition

I love making paper snowflakes, but mine always tend to come out looking more like doilies than like snowflakes.

I made the tiny ones in the upper left of this photo. They DO have six sides, but they're not really snowflakey, are they?

Advent 2006
Where did the time go!?!

But last week I ran across this link showing how to make scientifically accurate snowflakes. I want those magazines, but I missed the Kickstarter by just a few days.

Anyway, we've been looking at the drawings posted there as we're making snowflakes this year.

Mostly made by Violin Daughter

Is creativity always this messy, or is it just me?

You should have seen it before I cleaned up the glue that leaked out during the night
and went down that crack and onto the floor.

Still making points for my Moravian star.  I found this beautiful paper at Hobby Lobby.  I'm in love.

When making paper snowflakes the most important thing is folding the paper so you end up with a six-sided shape and not an eight-sided shape.  I've looked all over the internet and can't find any clear instructions on this, so tomorrow I'm going to make a tutorial will post it as soon as I can.

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I'm having a terrible time finding a good recording of the hymn Sleepers Awake -- most of the quality recordings are of an arrangement that's meant for performance rather than for congregational singing -- but this one's pretty good (the singing starts at 1:00).





Wake, awake, for night is flying:
The watchmen on the heights are crying,
     Awake, Jerusalem, arise!
Midnight's solemn hour is tolling,
His chariot wheels are nearer rolling,
     He comes; prepare ye virgins wise.
Rise up, with willing feet
Go forth, the Bridegroom meet:
          Alleluia!
Bear through the night
Your well-trimmed light,
Speed forth to join the marriage rite.

Sion hears the watchmen singing,
Her heart with deep delight is springing,
     She wakes, she rises from her gloom:
Forth her Bridegroom comes, all glorious,
In grace arrayed, by truth victorious;
     Her star is ris'n, her light is come!
All hail, Incarnate Lord,
Our crown, and our reward!
          Alleluia!
We haste along,
In pomp of song,
And gladsome join the marriage throng.

Lamb of God, the heav'ns adore thee,
And men and angels sing before thee,
     With harp and cymbal's clearest tone.
By the pearly gates in wonder
We stand, and swell the voice of thunder
     That echos round thy dazzling throne.
No vision ever brought,
No ear hath ever caught
          Such rejoicing:
We raise the song,
We swell the throng,
To praise thee ages all along.
Amen.

(Tr. Catherine Windworth, 1858, alt., 1940 Episcopal Hymnal version)

Paper handicrafts for Christmas, and more Sleepers Awake

Last week Professor Carol wrote about Moravian Stars and included a link to a site that gives instructions in making something similar by folding and weaving long strips of paper.

Here are a few we made today:

I used legal-sized (8 1/2" x 14") copier paper for all the stars.  The size of the stars is determined by the width of the strips, and the strips must be at least 24 times as long as they are wide.  For the small ones, I used 1/2" x 14" strips.  For the medium one I used 3/4" by 28" strips (that's two 14" long strips taped end-to-end) and for the large one I used 1" x 28".  The larger ones were a lot easier to work with.

One of the ladies at the Ambleside Online Forum shared a link showing how to make a Moravian Star tree topper.  You start with a polygon for a base and then add cones to each face of it to make the star.  I've done the base so far, but this is a lot harder than the woven stars.

Base and template for points

That base is an icosahedron, which means that it has twenty sides.  Each face has three edges, so the points will be made of three-sided cones.

This thing sounds suspiciously like a geometry lesson, and in fact, the stars were orgininally created by a geometry teacher.

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Here's a lovely rendition of Sleepers Awake played on the guitar.  Enjoy!

Sleepers Awake on the king of instruments

Today's offering is a performance on the pipe organ, my favorite instrument. I'm pretty sure God Himself invented it, and the only people capable of playing it are Wizards -- who else would be able to use their hands and feet at the same time to make these earth-shatteringly beautiful sounds? The organist is Rodney Gehrke (whom I don't know from Adam's off ox, but he's amazing) because I don't have a recording of my favorite organist, the Wizardess whom I am proud to call Mommy. (I'm just a Squib, in case you're wondering.)

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[I posted this a few minutes ago but there was a typo in the title, which Blogger uses for the post's URL and I just couldn't stand looking at it, so that one's been deleted. Sorry for the confusion!]

Sleepers Awake

Sleepers Awake (also known as Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, BWV 645) is a chorale cantata J.S. Bach composed in 1731 for the 27th Sunday after Trinity, which fell on the 25th of November that year.  That was a year when Easter came unusually early, because it's not often the calendar has twenty-seven Sundays after Trinity, so thankfully this piece has become a popular part of Advent.

Many hymnals have a version of it. The the 1940 Episcopal hymnal, the OPC's Trinity Hymnal, the LCMS's Lutheran Worship, and the UMC's 1989 hymnal all share Catherine Winkworth's 1858 translation, called "Wake, Awake, for Night Is Flying."

The Cyber Hymnal provides an 1864 translation by Frances E. Cox called "'Sleepers, Wake!' The Watch Cry Pealeth," and in 1982 Carl P. Daw, Jr, translated it anew, calling it "'Sleepers, Wake!' A Voice Astounds Us," for the hymnal that was published that year.

I had always assumed that the cantata was written first and the hymn was taken from it, but it turns out that it's exactly the other way around!

Philipp Nicolai was a Lutheran minister and hymnwriter who lived through an outbreak of the plague in the late 1500s.  He lost 170 of his parishioners in one week alone, and in 1598, to comfort those who remained, he wrote a series of meditations called  The Mirror of Joy, which contained this hymn.

I believe this is the original version of it:

Image source:
http://imslp.org/wiki/Wachet_auf,_ruft_uns_die_Stimme_%28Nicolai,_Philipp%29

I've been all over YouTube the last couple of days listening to dozens of lovely renditions of this hymn and of the cantata -- far too many to put into one blog post -- so I will post a few more of my favorites as the week goes on.  In the meantime I'll leave you with this, a congration singing it in Lituanian to the melody as originally composed by Philipp Nicolai.

Preparing for the Season of Preparation

This week we brought the box of Advent decorations down from attic.  It's full of Chrismons we made last year and opening the box filled the air with the fragrance of apples and cinnamon -- beautiful!

Here's the recipe we used to make the ornaments. It's a good project to do with your children. One year we invited another family with small children over to make them with us, which was a lot of fun.  That link has lots of lovely ideas for using the ornaments as gifts, and as decorations all year.

This doesn't look like much . . .

. . . but when I add fresh greenery and candles it'll be our Advent wreath.



Here's what it looked like a few years ago:

A year or two after we moved here a friend gave me a set of candles in the traditional colors -- three purple and one rose -- and I used that color for three or four years, but since white was our family's traditional color, some of the children were upset at this innovation (you know what rigid traditionalists children are!) and we've reverted to white the last few years.  But yesterday one of the children asked for the purple and rose candles, so I ordered a set from Cokesbury. 

And here's a great idea I found in the course of my research -- on Christmas Eve you can take out all the Advent-colored candles and put in white ones instead, then burn those for the twelve days of Christmas. 

I don't know why I never thought of that myself.  Isn't the internet a wonderful thing?

Here's an earlier incarnation of our Advent wreath.  It's a styrofoam wreath form with artificial greenery poked into it.  I didn't use candle holders, I just worked the candles into the styrofoam.  This wreath lasted about five years before it started falling apart.

I'm also working on a missal for us to use when lighting the candles during Evening Prayers on Sunday nights.  The Advent wreath is a German tradition and as far as I can tell there isn't any particularly Anglican tradition surrounding it so each year I use the Daily Office in the Prayer Book for Scripture readings, but I also search the internet for ideas.


Much, much easier is putting together a missal for Thanksgiving since it's just Morning Prayers with the Litany of Thanksgiving.  I made a Scribd document in 2011 that you can download and print if you're looking for something to use with your family.

If you'd like to know more about Advent, this article by Dennis Bracher was the most helpful to me when I first started learning about myself.  The article concludes with a long list of Advent hymns, so be sure to check it out.

Advent centerpiece

What about y'all?  Are you planning anything special for Advent?  Do you have any resources you'd like to share?

Thinking about Advent

I was just looking over my old posts on Advent and came across a link to an article I read years ago when we were first learning about Church seasons: The Christian Season of Advent: Anticipation and Hope. In it he explains what Advent is, describes the Advent wreath and the significance of the candles, and lists lots of hymns appropriate to the season.

That article is part of his series on the Church year, Seasons of the Church Year, which is a great resource. Check it out.

The Collect for the First Sunday in Advent

ALMIGHTY God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal, through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, now and ever. Amen.

A collect, pronounced /KOL-ect/ when used as a noun, is a brief prayer that's meant to be used at a certain place during a prayer service. There is one Collect for each Sunday of the year, plus for special days, and there are other collects, a Collect for Peace and a Collect for Grace are both used during Morning Prayer.

The Church year begins with Advent and the Collect for the First Sunday in Advent is to be used during prayers every day from now until Christmas.

Lex orandi lex credendi is an ancient principle that is translated, "The law of prayer is the law of belief." Among other things, this means that the way you pray, the way you worship, shapes what you believe. This little prayer beautifully encapsulates the entire Gospel.

One thing I love about written prayers is that they can be memorized and said by everyone in the family -- even the non-readers -- so that we can pray with one voice. We'll be including this one in our daily Morning and Evening prayers, after the Lord's Prayer, and before the closing prayers. Last night Mike read it alone, but after this we're going to encourage everyone to say it together.

I hope you'll pray it with us this Advent season. :-)

Advent Tree

I can't believe it's nearly Advent -- this year just flew by!

This is an updated repost from last year.

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Advent preparations

We've celebrated Advent with an Advent wreath nearly every Christmas since we married, but two years ago we added a new tradition: An Advent Tree!

It came about like this: We usually wait till just before Christmas Eve to get the Christmas tree and for some reason the kids always panic -- they always think we're not going to be able to find one this year. It almost happened once, ten or twelve years ago -- there had been a drought out west so there were fewer trees available than usual, and nearly all of them were sold out by the time we went shopping. We ended up with a Charlie Brown Christmas tree.

Well, six years ago when we first moved here to Virginia, we went to a church that put a Christmas tree up in the Parish house right after Thanksgiving, and had the children make ornaments on the first Sunday of Advent to put on it. Each ornament was decorated with, or made in the shape of, a traditional symbol that represents Christ -- a lamb, a cross, the Chi Rho, Alpha and Omega, and so forth. This style of ornament is called a "Chrismon," which means "Christ Monogram." I thought it was a neat idea and tried to figure out how to do it at home -- I mean, really, where would I put a second tree?

Finally I figured it out -- we didn't need two trees. All we had to do was put up the Christmas tree at the beginning of Advent, call it an Advent tree, and then decorate it with Chrismons. On Christmas Eve we could remove the Chrismons (or not) and add our usual Christmas ornaments. It worked out so well we did it again the next year and the kids are looking forward to it this year. We'll make the ornaments tomorrow so they'll have plenty of time to dry and can be decorated on Friday.

Here are the specifics (sorry I don't have any pictures -- I never have pictures).

Here's where you can find an explanation of Chrismons and a PDF file of patterns you can print out.

Here is a recipe for the ornaments. I cut them all out with a 3" biscuit cutter which is a nice size for decorating. The first year we used white fabric paint but last year I tried Wilton's fondant icing writer and sprinkled them with gold, silver, or pearl dust. They turned out beautifully. After Christmas we hung them outside for the birds. (Well, that was the intention anyway, and I thought we'd done it, but Elaienar tells me that none of them made it because the younger children insisted on saving them.)

The designs I have used are fairly simple -- Celtic cross, shepherd's crook, crown of thorns, cross and crown, eternity cross, IXΘYΣ, and several others that don't require much detail.

Thanksgiving weekend we put up the tree, with its lights and the star topper, a brass Moravian star, pierced, with a light inside. Saturday night before evening prayers, we turn on the lights (but not the star) and let the kids each pick one Chrismon to put on the tree, and talk a bit about the symbol and what it means. On Sunday we have the lights on all day, and that night we let them add a Chrismon, or one purple or silver ornament from our collection (purple being the color of Advent). The next week we add one Chrismon a day, but we leave the lights off until the next Saturday night. Then we do the whole thing over again so that the tree grows more and more festive as Christmas approaches.

On the 24th, we remove some of the purple and silver ornaments (because we have a LOT of Chrismas ornaments) and add the rest of our Christmas stuff. That night we turn on the star as well as the lights, and leave them on through Epiphany (except for while we were sleeping or away from home, of course). We take the tree down a day or so after Epiphany, and we generally start back to school on the next Monday, known traditionally as Plough Monday.

The kids love crafty stuff and I normally don't do much of that kind of thing with them, so it makes a nice change, and adding the ornaments day by day builds excitement in a way that's just perfect for this season of anticipation.

Advent preparations

We've celebrated Advent with an Advent wreath nearly every Christmas since we married, but last year we began a new tradition: an Advent Tree!

It came about like this: We usually wait till just before Christmas Eve to get the Christmas tree and for some reason the kids always panic -- they always think we're not going to be able to find one this year. It almost happened once, ten or twelve years ago -- there had been a drought out west so there were fewer trees available than usual, and nearly all of them were sold out by the time we went shopping. We ended up with a Charlie Brown Christmas tree.

Well, five years ago when we first moved here to Virginia, we went to a church that put a Christmas tree up in the Parish house right after Thanksgiving, and had the children make ornaments on the first Sunday of Advent to put on it. Each ornament was decorated with, or made in the shape of, a traditional symbol that represents Christ -- a lamb, a cross, the Chi Rho, Alpha and Omega, and so forth. This style of ornament is called a "Chrismon," which means "Christ Monogram." I thought it was a neat idea and tried to figure out how to do it at home -- I mean, really, where would I put a second tree?

Finally, last year I figured it out -- we didn't need two trees. All we had to do was put up the Christmas tree at the beginning of Advent, call it an Advent tree, and then decorate it with Chrismons. On Christmas Eve we could remove the Chrismons (or not) and add our usual Christmas ornaments. It worked out so well we're going to do it again this year. We made the ornaments yesterday and will decorate them on Friday.

Here are the specifics (sorry I don't have any pictures -- I'll see if I can get some this year and add them later).

Here's where you can find an explanation of Chrismons and a PDF file of patterns you can print out [link corrected].

Here is the recipe we used to make the ornaments. [Note added 21 November 2011: That link is dead now, but this one has the recipe and a clear explanation of the technique.] I used the first recipe at that link, cut them out with a 3" biscuit cutter. Last year we decorated them with white fabric paint but this year I'm going to try Wilton's fondant icing writer, but I have fabric paints on hand in case that doesn't work out. The plan is to hang them outside after Christmas for the birds.

The designs I used last year were fairly simple -- Celtic cross, shepherd's crook, crown of thorns, cross and crown, eternity cross, IXΘYΣ, and several others that didn't require much detail.

Thanksgiving weekend we put up the tree, with its lights and the star topper, a brass Moravian star, pierced, with a light inside. Saturday night before evening prayers, we turned on the lights (but not the star) and let the kids each pick one Chrismon to put on the tree, and talked a bit about the symbol and what it meant. On Sunday we had the lights on all day, and that night we let them add a Chrismon, or one purple or silver ornament from our collection (purple being the color of Advent). The next week we added one Chrismon a day, but we left the lights off until the next Saturday night. Then we did the whole thing over again so that the tree grew more and more festive as Christmas approached.

On the 24th, we removed some of the purple and silver ornaments (because we have a LOT of Chrismas ornaments) and added the rest of our Christmas stuff. That night we turned on the star as well as the lights, and left them on through Epiphany (except for while we were sleeping or away from home, of course). We take the tree down a day or so after Epiphany, and we generally start back to school on the next Monday, known traditionally as Plough Monday.

The kids love crafty stuff and I normally don't do much of that kind of thing with them, so it makes a nice change, and adding the ornaments day by day builds excitement in a way that's just perfect for this season of anticipation.

A hymn for Advent

The King shall come when morning dawns,
And light triumphant breaks;
When beauty gilds the eastern hills,
And life to joy awakes.

Not as of old a little child
To bear, and fight, and die,
But crowned with glory like the sun
That lights the morning sky.

O brighter than the rising morn
When He, victorious, rose,
And left the lonesome place of death,
Despite the rage of foes.

O brighter than that glorious morn
Shall this fair morning be,
When Christ, our King, in beauty comes,
And we His face shall see.

The King shall come when morning dawns,
And earth’s dark night is past;
O haste the rising of that morn,
The day that aye shall last.

And let the endless bliss begin,
By weary saints foretold,
When right shall triumph over wrong,
And truth shall be extolled.

The King shall come when morning dawns,
And light and beauty brings:
Hail, Christ the Lord! Thy people pray,
Come quickly, King of kings.

Words: Greek, tr. by John Brown­lie, 1907
Music: ST. STEPHEN, William Jones, 1789

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

We don't have the tree up yet, and I've only decorated a little so far - I tend to add a bit every couple of days, but here's a peek:



Advent wreath





Here's our living room with Advent centerpiece







The sideboard in the dining room





And the fireplace in the sitting room - the Christmas room, the kids call it now, since it's where the Advent wreath is, and where the tree will go in another week or two.





The kids made a bunch of snowflakes today and I let them hang them on the chandelier in the dining room - you can just barely see Mosey in the background, serenading us on the piano with Christmas carols.

Happy New Year!

Tonight we lit our first Advent candle - I think this is our kids' favorite part of Christmas. The verse we always read for the first candle is Isaiah 9:2, "The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined." Before reading the verse, we always turn off the lights and let the kids walk around for a bit, then Mike reads the verse and the appointed child strikes a match and lights the candle.

We've been doing this for so many years I've lost count, and they never tire of it. It's great having a tradition like this.

Advent

Last year I posted some thoughts on Advent (here, here, and here) but since we're still growing in our understanding and practice, I thought it would be worthwhile to add what we've learned since last year (and I cannot believe it's already been a whole year!).

We've celebrated Advent since our oldest was a baby, and really, our Advent season was a fairly bright, Christmassy feeling time - lots of Christmas music playing all the time, tree going up right after Thanksgiving, house being decorated shortly thereafter, and then suddenly, everything came to an end on Christmas day. I'd had the decorations up so long and the once-fresh tree was now dropping needles so profusely, that I usually undecorated the house before New Years Day, though we usually left the house lights on at night until New Years Eve because I didn't like the sudden anti-climax.

Two years ago, we decided to tone down Advent, which we had learned was the more tradition way of keeping it anyway. No Christmas music, no decorations until just a day or two before Christmas, and the tree went up and was decorated on Christmas Eve after the little ones were in bed. Instead of the month-long Christmas ending at Christmas Day, we decided to have twelve days of Christmas, ending with Epiphany. Now this is probably not as lavish a celebration as it might sound like - our kids get lots of books for Christmas from us, and some clothes and a few toys from grandparents, so we spread out the opening of presents over the twelve days, and to make the gifts last the whole time, several days their present is chocolate.

Last year around the middle of Advent I asked our oldest daughter what she thought of the new way we were celebrating and she said that it just didn't feel much like Christmas. I told her that it's not really supposed to feel like Christmas until Christmas actually comes, but I've been thinking about her comment since then, and I've decided that what was lacking was a keen sense of anticipation that borders on, and sometimes crosses over to, excitement. So we're trying to work on that - to add it back in. Although I think Advent should feel different than the rest of the year, and different from Christmas, I really don't want the season leading up to Christmas to be dull and dreary.

One of the things I think I should do is to let the various kids help me with picking out presents for their siblings and wrapping and hiding them. That's going to be a real no-brainer for most of you, I'm sure, but I... I have a confession to make: I hate shopping. Normally I do all of my Christmas shopping online, but I really think I should take the kids out, one or two at a time, and either let them help me pick out presents for one another and for Daddy and grandparents, or just give them each a little money to spend on someone else. Mike already does this a little bit, but obviously his time is far more limited than mine is.

I have another confession to make: I'm not very crafty - shocking, I know, coming from a Pseudo-Prairie Muffin, but it gets worse. I don't like cooking or doing art projects with children.

However, my children love all this and I think I really should just do it with them, and smile and have a good time if nothing else, enjoying their pleasure. I know I can do this because it's what I do whenever I have a social engagement I must attend - smile and pretend I'm enjoying myself - and if I can do it for outsiders, surely I can do it for my kids, right?

Anyway, Valerie taught me and the girls to crochet when she was here this summer, and I've been working on an afghan for Mike's grandmother, which I should have done by the end of this week. I need to figure out some other projects like this that the kids and I can do together. We need to bake cookies and give them away.

Jeepers, this post has turned into some kind of confessional. I did NOT mean for that to happen, but oh well. I think I'll leave it. Y'all pray for me, okay?

And a blessed Advent season to you all, as you seek to glorify God and enjoy him with your families!

Christmassy stuff

My eldest and I went shopping yesterday, and we noticed that already certain Christmas items are being replace by Valentine's Day items in the stores. Now this makes sense from the marketing standpoint - the sooner you get things out on the shelves the more stuff people will buy. You know how it is. If you buy your Halloween candy right after Labor Day, you're sure to eat it all up long before Halloween and then you have to buy more, so the store ends up selling you twice as much as if they waited until the week of Halloween to set out those giant bins of treats. And so, on the day after Christmas, all the ornaments and decorations will be drastically reduced and within another day or two the aisles will be filled with candy hearts.

What always surprises me, though, is the number of houses that don't have their lights turned on after Christmas Eve, and all the poor discarded Christmas trees on the curb awaiting trash pick up just a day or two later. When I was growing up, practically everybody put up their trees and lights a week or two before Christmas, and took them down after New Year's.

Sunday evening, we decorated our church for Christmas - poinsettas in the sanctuary, luminarias leading up to the front doors, wreaths on the doors, a tree in the parish hall which all the children decorated, and lights in all the shrubbery and trees in the courtyard - and then yesterday, Mike bought our tree, which is sitting in a bucket of water on the carport waiting to be brought in on Friday. Today, the kids started making red and green paper chains and white paper angels to decorate the house with, and tomorrow or the next day, I'll put our evergreen wreath on the front door and hang greenery around the front room, bring out the Nativity scene and all the candles, and Mike will hang the lights on the house.

Our church has two Christmas Eve services, one at 5:30 to which we'll take the kids, and one at 11:00. We're thinking about going to the 11:00 service - just Mike and me. I suppose it will depend on how tired we are, because we will all be going to the Christmas morning service at 10:00. This is really exciting to me. I only remember being in church on Christmas morning one other time in my life - back in 1994 when Christmas happened to fall on Sunday.

Yesterday when Mike went out to buy the tree, Mosey, who stayed home with me, kept running around the house shouting, "We're getting a Christmas tree!" She does this every year. She always sounds like she thinks that since we do not yet have a tree, we will therefore not have one at all.

I asked Elai and Mosey what they thought of the way we celebrated Advent and Christmas last year, and so far this year. "It doesn't feel like Christmas yet." "It feels like we're just waiting for Christmas to come and it'll never get here!" I told them that I think that's how Advent is supposed to feel.

More on Advent

Part of what we’re trying to do in raising our children, is to bring them up in an environment that is so suffused with Scripture and the story of our salvation, that our lives are ordered according to God’s Word, not just on the intellectual and spiritual planes, but physically as well. We want the reality of God’s covenant to impress itself on our children through every possible means - through reading and listening to God’s Word of course, but also through the senses of taste and smell and touch, and through the very rhythm of our lives.

In his article on The Seasons of the Church Year, Dr. Dennis Bratcher writes:

We keep track of time and seasons of the year by using calendars that provide us opportunities to observe, commemorate, and celebrate certain events or occasions. The changing seasons of the year also provide us with recurring opportunities to celebrate the Christian Faith in worship. The Christian church, following earlier Jewish tradition, has long used the seasons of the year as an opportunity for festivals and holidays, sacred time set aside to worship God as the Lord of life.

While Jewish celebration revolves around the Exodus from Egypt, the Christian Church year focuses on the life and ministry of Jesus. The sequence of festivals from Advent to Resurrection Sunday becomes an annual spiritual journey for worshippers as they kneel at the manger, listen on a hillside, walk the streets of Jerusalem, hear the roar of the mob, stand beneath the cross, and witness the resurrection! The rest of the church year provides opportunity to reflect on the meaning of the coming of Jesus and his commission to his people to be a light to the world.

He has also written an article on The Season of Advent: Anticipation and Hope, which gives more information on the origins of Advent and suggestions for celebrating it. There are also articles that explain all of the Church seasons more fully than I can, plus he tells why Advent wreaths traditionally have three purple candles and one pink candle.

Allison posted three links in the comments to this post at Richard's blog, the second of which is the same as the one I posted just above. The third link there also has recipes for some yummy-looking treats.

I'm still looking for traditions and recipes associated with the celebrations of Pentecost and Ascension, as I mentioned at Carmon's blog last month Any tips would be greatly appreciated! BBG Valerie is also looking for info on celebrating the Church's holy days.

**Update**
Just got a notice in my email from Doorposts about a booklet they are offering, Advent and Christmas in Family Worship. This booklet is new to me, but I've used several of their resources and have been very pleased with them.

Why celebrate Advent?

Kelly M asked a question in the comments to the post below that I thought was worth a whole post for an answer. Miss M asked:

Why do you celebrate Advent? I thought it was a Catholic celebration, but what you've posted doesn't look bad to me, so I'm not sure why the protestant church doesn't celebrate it too. And, what made you and Mr. Cumbee decide to start celebrating it?

The short answer is that while Mike and I both grew up in Christian homes and knew that Christmas was the celebration of the birth of our Savior, the focus of the actual celebration in our homes was the Christmas tree and the coming of Santa and presents. We wanted our celebration of Christmas in our own home to focus on why God sent his son, from his birth to his resurrection, and to downplay the "getting presents" part of it, and Advent seemed the ideal tool for doing that.

to be continued...

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.