Burn your First Candle it’s 1st Advent….

Today is the First Advent, I know some people here celebrate this and some don’t know what it is about. I would love to introduce you to the advent wreath  and give you some background on how we celebrated Advent when I grew up in Germany.

Each Sunday starting with the last Sunday in November or the last 4 Sundays before Christmas,  we kick off the Advent Season; we burn one Candle on our Advent wreath almost all day to celebrate the Christmas Season, but at least every Sunday during Breakfast.

When I was little we burned that candle every day for breakfast and coffee breaks, now that I’m a mom and my life is a lot more fast pace then it was back in the good ‘ol day, I don’t have time to sit down in the morning for Breakfast or take a coffee break.

However I do want to keep the tradition alive and we all sit like every Sunday together and have breakfast anyway, so I always have our wreath and we burn the candle(s) to help us sweeten the wait for the Christ Child.

here is a little Poem or saying that we used to say:

History

The ring or wheel of the Advent wreath of evergreens decorated with candles was a symbol in northern Europe long before the arrival of Christianity. The circle symbolized the eternal cycle of the seasons while the evergreens and lighted candles signified the persistence of life in the midst of winter. Some sources suggest the wreath–now reinterpreted as a Christian symbol–was in common use in the Middle Ages, others that it was established in Germany as a Christian custom only in the 16th century, and others that the Advent wreath was not invented until the 19th century. This last theory credits Johann Hinrich Wichern (1808-1881), a Protestant pastor in Germany and a pioneer in urban mission work among the poor, as the inventor of the modern Advent wreath. During Advent, children at a mission school founded by Wichern would ask daily if Christmas had arrived. In 1839, he built a large wooden ring (made out of an old cartwheel) with 19 small red and 4 large white candles. A small candle was lit successively every weekday during Advent. On Sundays, a large white candle was lit. The custom gained ground among Protestant churches in Germany and evolved into the smaller wreath with four or five candles known today. Roman Catholics in Germany began to adopt the custom in the 1920s, and in the 1930s it spread to North America^[1]. In Medieval times advent was a fast during which people’s thoughts were directed to the expected second coming of Christ; but in modern times it has been seen as the lead up to Christmas, and in that context Advent Wreath serves as a reminder of the approach of the feast.

I pulled the History on Advent Wreath from Wikipedia and you can read the full story HERE