Being a Benedictine Oblate, I have found that “The Joy of Advent with Saint Benedict” (by Father John Fortin) to be a great daily Advent meditation on the gospel of the day. Heard about it on the Sonrise Morning radio show and downloaded it to my Kindle that day. I’m burning some monster (3″ diam) candles in my Advent wreath that were sent to me from St Bernard’s candle shop in Cullman, Alabama, but no Santa and no tree for me. I’ll remember Saint Nicholas on his feast day next week and trees don’t evoke any Christ-child images for me. Instead I recall my Latin teacher telling me it goes back to the barbarians hanging dead Centurions from the evergreens at the foot of the alps to warn the Roman Army not to come any farther.

With four little ones homeschooling, we have plenty of opportunities to make Advent special….now we just have to actually do it! We’ve struggled to find good traditions that are age appropriate and that the kids will take part in. This year (finally!) we’ve been able to adopt a decade of the rosary each night with lighting the Advent candles and reading some special prayers before bed. This is still hard, but we’re sticking it out and praying that soon they’ll stop swinging rosaries around and crawling behind the furniture. Oh, and we’re also doing little disposable Advent calendars that the kids LOVE. And we’re moving Mary and Joseph from the nativity set around the house as they seek shelter.

I’m doing several interesting things this advent. On my blog I am hosting “WORDLESS ADVENT” along with the 26 Days of Christmas. In Wordless Advent I am posting a “digital gift” a picture or video of some sort to represent christmas or advent of different things I find cute/interesting. A lot of it has been crafts you can think about making I’ve found on pinterest.

The 26 Days of Christmas are just different christmas questions I have been answering

I have an advent wreath I STILL need to put together all the supplies are on my desk. I have also been going to an advent reflection at my church on Tuesday nights.

We have an Advent wreath, a Nativity scene countdown to Christmas, and I’m trying to read the daily readings and pray more.

My wife and I have a toddler, and another child is on the way in March.

We have prayed the Advent wreath every year since we married, using the liturgy of the hours. We light the candle while singing the tune “Light one candle for…” (and add Love, Hope, Joy, then Peace as each week progresses). Then we follow the hours format. Lastly, we open the door of the calendar before extinguishing the candle. Starting on the 17th, we pray the O Antiphons. I’ve thought about doing the Jesse Tree, but we don’t want to get too crowded.

This year we introduced a calendar with chocolate, to get/keep our toddler engaged in the process. Before she gets the piece of chocolate behind each door, she says who she wants to pray for that day. [Eventually, as she grows, we will have something similar to the felt banner my dad made when I was growing up, where the Star rests on the house of a family whose intention we pray for, as the Star journeys to Bethlehem.]

We’ve taken to doing the Advent wreath in the early evening, rather than at bedtime, because my wife has to get up early for work and our toddler brushes teeth at bedtime and doesn’t need chocolate in her teeth at that point.

Plus my wife and I have our evening devotional at bedtime, which consists of renewing our Total Consecration to Mary up until Dec.8th, in anticipation of our Dec.13th anniversary, just as we did the Advent leading up to our wedding day (our wedding bands are Montfort Consecration rings).

On St. Lucy’s Day, the 13th, who is patron of Light and patron of our marriage, we place electric candles in the windows, to indicate to the outside world- who’ve had their lights on display since Halloween- that the season is getting closer, that Christ the Light of the World is getting nearer.

My wife and I debated heatedly when to start decorating. I grew up in a home that didn’t take down Advent colors until Dec.23 or 24th. My wife grew up in a home that put up a tree two weeks before Christmas. So the candles in the window are a compromise. We also agreed to put out the creche on St. Lucy’s Day.

I grew up putting the three kings in different parts of the house and moving them closer to the stable in the days leading to the Epiphany on Jan.6th, and I hope eventually to have a figurine of Mary on the donkey with Joseph leading her to the stable and getting closer each day leading up to the 24th.

We always did celebrate Dec. 6th by putting our shoes out, but I really like the idea proposed here in the Letter to Santa– of doing stockings on the 6th and gifts on the 25th. We have not started stockings yet, because we are always traveling to grandparents’ houses, and they still have our stockings from our childhood. I’m going to discuss this idea with my wife!

We also have a tradition form my family that we have continued into our marriage of blessing the house on the Epiphany, proceeding from room to room with holy water while singing “We Three Kings” and using the prayers from Prayers for the Domestic Church and inscribing the lintel of the front door with the new year “20+C+M+B+__” which my wife and I both did in our college dorm rooms.

The last family tradition I’d like to mention comes from my parents, who every year put out luminaries on Christmas Eve, to welcome the Christ child up to our door. We never had electric lights for the purpose of keeping the significance of the luminaries. Our Dec. 13th tradition in our marriage is an homage to the luminaries of my youth, and I’ve heard they do something similar in Mexico for the feast of OLOGuadalupe.

Sadly, her day gets lost in my enthusiasm for St. Lucy. She’s important to us this year, since my wife is with child. Is there anything we can do on the 12th? We’ll pray for the victims of abortion certainly, but how to impart that to a toddler??

Joseph K– don’t have an advent wreath? No problem (I’d mail you one if I could, but that would mean giving a stranger your address). Instead, use four pillar candles and place them in the shape of a cross, then encircle them with greenery. Or tie a sprig of greenery to each candle with a purple/pink ribbon.

@SWP I LOVE your idea of giving newlyweds an Advent wreath! That is such a thoughtful and practical gift. I have friends that will get people a “cross” for a gift and I’m like catholics have SOOOOOO many crosses it’s not even funny (at least we do my mom has about 10 in her room bc ppl are always giving them to her) Advent wreaths (esp purple and pink candles) can be SOO hard to find!

I think I need to invite you to my wedding so I get a cool gift jk

I love reading all these awesome advent traditions. Makes me want to incorporate some of them into my life

Anytime I’m near a Catholic bookstore, I try to see if there are some inexpensive wire Advent wreaths on sale. Often they get marked down post-season. Grand Rapids has The Angelus or the Baraga bookstore, Detroit has many including Fuchs or the Chancery, Cincinnati has the Franciscan bookstore, Iowa has a few, Minneapolis has one downtown. There is an Irish supply store near my parents house and the woman there was selling Autom wire wreaths for only $5.00 each and I bought her whole shelf and give them away as wedding presents. You can also go to Bronner’s in Frankenmuth, MI and get different types.

I believe the wreath should be a circle and never anything that looks like a candelabra. The candles can sometimes even be found at Christian bookstores. Or they will order them for you. or- again- you could tie ribbons round a white taper. In college I had to be careful the RA didn’t see me lighting candles indoors, so I used four little votives on a gold plate with a few sprigs and kept it it the closet and only pulled it out for prayer. So even if you have a round plate with pillars on it, you can evoke a circle.

Or get an inexpensive wreath from a Boy Scout and put candlesticks around it. There’s no excuse in my book for not praying the Advent wreath each year.

@ Bob I agree. Sometimes I think the holidays are worse for single ppl than valentine’s day. The holidays are esp hard as the last few years I haven’t had any money.

Thank you @ sister and thank you @Beth Anne. It’s a pretty unprecedented situation. The number of Catholic marriages per year is only one-third of what it used to be as recently as the eighties. In parallel there has been an explosion in the number of Catholic singles over 40 will almost certainly never never have children of their own and will quite possibly never marry at all. It comes as quite a shock to faithful, practicing Catholics who have ordered their lives toward marriage and family, swimming against the current tides, but who find that they have missed that vocation. We don’t want to be “recognized” or “celebrated” or “supported” as being single–we want to be not-single and living the married vocation we feel called to and have not realized. I don’t know what you can do about it except pray and work toward a culture–in the Church, at least–that is more supportive of the married vacation. There is pretty much nothing for the over 25s. The occasional prayer for single Catholics at intercessions during mass would be helpful. Involuntary, protracted singleness is not a passing state of live for many people nowadays.

I am waaaay late to the game, but this is so fun! We have an Advent wreath, a nativity (that my grandmother made!) on our mantle, and plan in future years when the little one (almost one year old) is a bit older to do a Jesse tree. Oh, the excitement of Advent with little ones!