A. K. Chidgzey

The word advent comes from the Latin word adventus which means “coming” or “arrival” and was generally used to refer to the arrival of an important person. So within Christian tradition, it refers to the period of reflection in the lead up to the celebration of the arrival of Jesus. It also doubles as anticipation of Jesus’ second coming, which we’ll discuss in a moment.

Historically, it’s not clear when the practice began, but I’ll give you a basic stitching together of the little bits and pieces I’ve discovered.

In the 5^th century, Bishop Perpetuus of Tours began a practice of fasting 3 days a week before Christmas from the 11^th of November, though it might have just been Mondays. He seems to have been a bit of a fan of fasting because he insisted that people fast on Wednesdays and Fridays all year round. In any case, his practice of fasting from the Feast of St. Martin on the 11^th of November until Christmas caught on.

It became known as Saint Martin’s Lent, as a bit of a mirror to the period leading up to Easter. St Martin was a Christian soldier in the fourth century, though he ended up quitting the army to become a monk. There is a legend that when he was a soldier he came across a beggar. Martin cut his cloak in half and gave the beggar one half of the cloak. Which apparently is supposed to be more generous than how it actually sounds – I’m not sure how much good half a cloak can actually do, but I guess that’s better than nothing. That night Martin received a vision of Jesus wearing that half and woke to find his cloak fully mended. But also maybe the vision was just the ghost of the beggar after freezing to death and came to ask Martin why he only gave half a cloak. In any case, Martin’s cloak became a venerated relic that actually ended up in the possession of Charlemagne.

Martin then became known for asking aristocracy to show mercy to one of their prisoners and release that prisoner. For whatever reason, they were unable to refuse Martin, so they would refuse even meeting Martin. So he became Martin the Merciful, a sort of Santa Clause type figure perhaps? So not a bad way to start the Advent season.

The Council of Tours in 567 mentions a season of advent, ordering monks to fast every day of December until Christmas. Which seems like a long time to me. Maybe they could eat at night time, I’m not sure. But within a few decades the practice spread across all of France and you can’t keep a whole population starving so they decided to fast three days a week.

So the practice of celebrating advent in the lead up to Christmas is quite an old tradition. Older than I realized when I first began research for this episode.

The second oldest surviving liturgy, known as the Gelasian Sacramentary, written in the 8^th century, provides set readings for Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday during Advent. This is the oldest explicit reference to an organised Advent season.

And then in the 9^th century, Advent was reduced to four weeks, rather than 40 days – I don’t know why, but maybe because they were sick of fasting for so long. Nevertheless it remained a sort of penance, reflecting on their need for a saviour.

There was no single universal practice; different regions and different orders did things slightly differently. Some preferred St Andrew to St Martin, some fasted for 5 weeks, others for 6, and some not at all. Some Eastern traditions call it the Nativity Fast rather than Advent or the St Martin’s Fast.

Today, Advent is celebrated on the four Sundays before Christmas, somewhere between 27^th of November and the 3^rd of December, and then lasts until Christmas Eve. In the liturgical calendar, Advent actually marks the start of the year.

In some traditions, people fast, though this is not as common as it used to be, meditate, and pray. In some eastern churches, the 40 days leading up to Christmas are a period of penance, so less happy and exciting but still joyful and grateful.

Sometimes the first two weeks are focused on the promise of a renewed creation, with the following two focusing specifically on the narrative of Jesus’ birth.

Others spend a week focusing on the four themes of hope, peace, love, and joy.

Though today there is still a set liturgical order and time period within church practice, in general society advent just kind of begins when it begins, which is often straight after Halloween, and it can be quite commercialised, but I don’t really have a problem with that commercialisation because, at least for me, I don’t find that that detracts from the sacred moments of the Christmas season. And parts of it are quite fun, like all the lights, the decorations, the trees, the movies, the special Santa events. It is quite exciting and magical. Though the carols get a bit annoying after a while And then at home with my family, or in the quiet, or at church, I can take those moments to reflect on the significance of Christmas.

Another practice is the Advent wreath, which is sometimes just hanging on someone’s door or the more traditional version with candles.

The first Advent wreath was created by Johann Hinrich Wichern in 1839. He was a German Lutheran pastor who focused on mission to the poor and at the mission school he got tired of kids asking if Christmas had arrived. Are we there yet? Are we there yet? So he got a cartwheel, flipped it on its side and placed 28 candles on it, 24 red and 4 white. He would light a candle each day, with each Sunday being a white candle, until Christmas had arrived. So it was just a way of letting people know how far away Christmas was. So maybe it’s also the original advent calendar!

The tradition spread and evolved to become just four candles, one lit each Sunday during Advent, and then a big, white candle lit on Christmas Eve.

The traditional liturgical colour for Advent within Roman Catholicism is violet, though the Lutherans opt for blue – because of course they do, they’ve gotta do everything differently to the Catholics. But they do it because blue is more closely associated with hope, whereas violet or purple is more sombre, penitent. So the candles became violet or blue, or some traditions became red or purple.

The third Sunday of Advent, known as Gaudete Sunday, changes colour to rose, and so the colour of the candle for that day changes to rose or to pink, but then the next week returns back to violet or purple or blue or red. Just pick your favourite colour really.

Gaudete is Latin for rejoice, coming from the first word of the liturgy for that day’s mass: Gaudete in Domino semper. I’m sure you don’t need me to translate, but just in case, that means ‘Rejoice in the Lord always’. This Sunday was a break from the penitential nature of Advent and represented the nearness of Christ. So it’s often associated with joy.

Generally, the wreath is ladened with symbolism. It is a circle to represent God’s infinite love. It is wrapped in evergreen foliage to represent the hope of eternal life that Jesus brings. The candles represent the light of God coming into world, with each candle representing something different: hope, love, joy, and peace. They can also represent the hope of the coming Messiah, the journey of Jospeh and Mary to Bethlehem, the joy expressed by the shepherds, and the peace brought by the angels.

Of course, another Advent tradition is setting up a Christmas tree or Christmas decorations and lights, which some people call the hanging of the greens, which is a term I would like to start using more often.

Another tradition which I only just learnt about as I was researching this episode is called Christingle, from the German Christkindl, meaning Christ child. A Christingle is a candle sticking out of an orange and decorated with lollies or dried fruit. It’s an old Moravian tradition dating to 1747. The Moravians were, and are, a group of Protestants who emerged from the German Pietist movement. The Moravian bishop Johannes de Watteville made the first Christingle as a way of getting kids to think about Christ and probably also to eat some fruit.

No one really knows why an orange became part of the practice, maybe it just happened to be in season, but it came to represent the world, with the candle representing Jesus the light of the world, wrapped in a red ribbon, representing Jesus’ blood. The candle is lit through Advent and on Christmas and then on Epiphany on the 6^th of January, which commemorates the day when the Magi came to see Jesus, who we’ll learn about in next week’s episode.

Christmas carols are of course also sung during this period of advent, though they are generally more closely associate with Christmas Eve and Christmas Day themselves, rather than the period leading up to Christmas. But these days, carols begin pretty early or roughly when Mariah Carey emerges. By the way, Mariah Carey earns about $3 million every year from royalties for her song, ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’. 3 million every year for something she made in 1994. That’s insane!

I mean, good on her, but that seems outrageous to me.

Also, fun fact: apparently some of the first carols were dogmatic denunciations of Arianism, written back in the 4^th century. Go listen to my episode on Arianism to learn more about Arius. Unfortunately, no Christmas carols are sung in that episode.

There was an old tradition of poor English women carrying around two dolls dressed to represent Jesus and his mother Mary. Every person who saw these dolls were required to give a halfpenny to these women, lest they be plagued with bad luck. It’s a rather odd practice, but it was a way of practicing generosity.

In some Italian traditions, apparently, the shepherds played the bagpipes known as pifferi, kind of like an oboe, and so towards the end of Advent some Italians might start playing bagpipes before images of Mary and the baby Jesus. And that’s not something I have ever witnessed, but I think I would like to.

So there’s a handful of traditions that you might like to try out some time. But if you do plan on trying the tradition of sending children off to run through orchards with torches and set fire to straw – you know, just like Jesus did – maybe tell someone first or make sure it’s safe, or just don’t.

Theologically, the concept of Advent is reflecting on and celebrating the arrival of the long awaited and hoped for Messiah. The concept of the Messiah is too long to cover in this episode, but generally was the expected king to rule over Israel. It really developed during times of persecution when the Israelites were vassal states to larger empires, like the Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans. So the Messianic age was a period where Israel was free, governed by this anointed one, with no human authority above them.

Jesus was seen as that king, but took on a bit more of a spiritual, eschatological meaning. It wasn’t the Roman Empire he defeated, it was sin and death. Within this Messianic age, Jesus is the eschatological king and we are free to follow him.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who we looked at in last week’s episode, said “The celebration of Advent is possible only to those who are troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, and who look forward to something greater to come.”

While this period is the celebration leading up to Christmas, it is also looking forward, beyond Christmas, to Jesus’ second coming. The Greek word for coming or arrival is Parousia, which also carries the connotations of appearance. But when these texts were written, the authors were expecting Jesus’ return imminently. As in, within their own lifetimes. Paul said, “Not all of us will die” and Jesus said that his generation would see the end of history. 2000 years later, Jesus hasn’t arrived and history is still moving forward as incessantly as the snails in my garden toward my tomatoes. Nevertheless, the promise of his imminence still stands. Through his resurrection, he is here with us. The episodes on eschatology and apocalypticism explore this a little further.

So in this advent season, I encourage you to take some time, whether you are a Christian or not, to reflect on the meaning on this time of year. You could go full medieval and fast and reflect on your sinfulness, or you could do something a little lighter, maybe take a few minutes here and there to meditate and reflect in preparation. For Christians, it is a period of reflecting on our shared humanity, on the reminder that God loves their creation, in preparation for what C. S. Lewis called the greatest miracle: the incarnation. We’ll explore that word incarnation later this month, but it essentially refers to the moment when God became human, when the creator embraces creation, in all of its frailty and joy, pain and pleasure, the mundane and the beautiful, in order to elevate humanity and restore it to right relationship with that wonderful counsellor, mighty God, everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace.

But for everyone, it is an opportunity for gratitude and generosity, time with family and friends, and, to be honest, you can imbue it with whatever meaning and significance you like. Sing some carols, eat too much food, get sick of singing carols, see some pretty lights, spend time with your favourite people, maybe follow in the footsteps of St Nicholas himself, the man who inspired the legend that is Santa Clause, and give gifts to those who cannot afford it or who find this season difficult.

I’m starting what might become a new tradition with my wife and toddler, and I’ve ordered myself an advent wreath and some candles, and plan on taking a moment each week to meditate on hope, peace, joy, and love. I ordered it off of Amazon so hopefully it arrives on time.

For some people, Christmas is not a time of joy. It is a time of bad memories or a painful reminder of how distant you are from family or how disconnected your family is. Perhaps your kids are with your ex this year. Maybe it’s the first Christmas without a loved one. When everyone and everything is telling you to feel a certain way, but you just don’t feel it. Perhaps it is for you a financially stressful time and you can’t afford to buy your kids what they asked Santa to bring.

There’s a myriad of reasons why this might not be such a happy time for people, who put on a brave face and pretend that everything is fine.

I see you. Know that you are not alone.

It is precisely that difficulty, that pain, that messiness, that is the whole point of Christmas. God sees the troubles is pained by them. So God stepped down into the messiness of life. God sees where you are at and God draws near. God didn’t wait for the world to fit into a perfect, idealised state but enters it, embraces it, loves it, for where and for what it is. God embraces you and loves you as you are.

I hope that this Advent season can be a time when all of you, my faithful listeners, can experience the hope, joy, peace, and love of the God who draws near.