Advent's coming!

[pmcleanj]

Only two weeks of Pentecost are left, and the second one of those is stir-up Sunday which starts the transition to Advent and to a new year.

How will you be celebrating the change of the year and the season of Advent? Special household liturgies or customs? Any special ecclesial customs at your parish?

[AveMaria]

I love Advent. :) :D :) Obviously, the usual stuff, Advent calenders, Advent wreaths, and I *love* Lessons & Carols.

This will be my first Advent season at this parish (and in this diocese), so I'm excited about that - Looking forward to learning the local parish traditions!

As far as special household traditions, my cats could care less about the liturgical year. :D I do collect creches/nativities and angels and I usually put them out as soon as Advent begins. I also try to add to those collections every year, and always enjoy looking for new pieces. Then, there's the 'trim the tree' party I have, when I get my friends over and we drink spiked eggnog and sing carols while hanging the glitz on my tree (and the cats hide under the sofa and watch us, wondering if we've lost our minds!).

Oh! And it's also traditional to watch the Charlie Brown Christmas special during the tree-trimming party! (I almost always cry when Linus explains what Christmas is all about).

[PaladinValer]

I also love Advent. I've already started amassing my collection of carols... :D

My parish has an advent wreath, and I'd like to do one at home this year too. As for any particular celebrations, I know of none as of now, but I'll keep you all informed (though we just had a splended harvest dinner complete with turkey, cranberries, stuffing, greenbeans, squash, smashed potatoes, and an assortment of pies for our observance of All Saint's Day just yesterday!).

[Songspinner]

Only two weeks of Pentecost are left, and the second one of those is stir-up Sunday which starts the transition to Advent and to a new year.

How will you be celebrating the change of the year and the season of Advent? Special household liturgies or customs? Any special ecclesial customs at your parish?

What about you....After the St micheal's dragon I'm dieing to hear what you do durring advent!

Pur church does a whole lot of carols (my fav) and all the usual advent stuff..and we also make christmas stocking for the kids at for a local abuse center.

[pmcleanj]

What about you....After the St micheal's dragon I'm dieing to hear what you do durring advent!

Pur church does a whole lot of carols (my fav) and all the usual advent stuff..and we also make christmas stocking for the kids at for a local abuse center.
On Stir-Up Sunday (not technically Advent, and quite frankly better known -- to you and I at least -- as Grey-Cup Sunday) we usually have our extended (non)family over to make up the Christmas pudding. Once the main batter is mixed, the egg-whites folded in, and nothing is left but the fruit, we turn off the pre-game show, gather everyone around, and pray:

"Stir up, we beseech Thee Oh Lord, the hearts of thy faithful people, that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruits of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."

Then each person stirs in a large spoonful of fruit, together with their prayers for the coming year. That gives the pudding a good four weeks to age properly and soak up cranberry brandy.

On Advent Sunday, the Advent candles come out (we use a five-branch menorah, rather than a wreath). Each day at supper we'll read the Collect for that week from the red book while we light the appropriate candles, and leave the candles burning until the end of supper.

Mary, Joseph, and the Donkey find a stopping-place in the back spare bedroom on Advent Sunday. Each day they move a little closer to the hall-stand where they will reside during Christmas. The stable itself replaces the ewer and basin that normally stand in our front hall (equipped with water and towels in the summer so that muddy-footed children can wash their feet before coming inside, filled with sweets during All Saints for the wee ghoulies that come calling, and filled with inexpensive gloves during the winter for children and visitors who have forgotten theirs and need to go out in sub-zero weather). Next to the stable a small dish sits full of hay: anyone who has done a secret good deed places a single blade of hay from the dish into the manger to create a soft place for the Christ Child.

On the first Thursday in December the "family" comes over again, and this time we make sugar-cookies in the shapes of trees, bells, holly-leaves, stars (and pigs???). My old roommate from my spinster days brings Spaeculaas to hang on our tree -- memorial of our first Christmas together when we discovered that even such a simple phrase as "Christmas Cookies" can cause discord when intercultural differences are misunderstood! We may make our mincemeat at that gathering, too, though I still have some left from last year!

The tree goes up on the last Sunday (we pick it up on the way home from our annual pre-Christmas visit to the local living-history village with my Dutch friend, adding to our collection of annual photos of the growing family taken under the same antique streetlamp each year), and will stay up until Twelth Night.

Since my elder daughter, and now both daughters were accepted into their Ballet School's associated company, all the above are now slotted into the narrow time available between Nutcracker rehearsals and performances (and impressed labour on sets and costumes). So if the bigger efforts, like mincemeat and cookies, have to go by the wayside some years, we just offer up our Art to God instead of our cookies, and carry on.

[Songspinner]

On Stir-Up Sunday (not technically Advent, and quite frankly better known -- to you and I at least -- as Grey-Cup Sunday) we usually have our extended (non)family over to make up the Christmas pudding. Once the main batter is mixed, the egg-whites folded in, and nothing is left but the fruit, we turn off the pre-game show, gather everyone around, and pray:

"Stir up, we beseech Thee Oh Lord, the hearts of thy faithful people, that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruits of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."

Then each person stirs in a large spoonful of fruit, together with their prayers for the coming year. That gives the pudding a good four weeks to age properly and soak up cranberry brandy.

On Advent Sunday, the Advent candles come out (we use a five-branch menorah, rather than a wreath). Each day at supper we'll read the Collect for that week from the red book while we light the appropriate candles, and leave the candles burning until the end of supper.

Mary, Joseph, and the Donkey find a stopping-place in the back spare bedroom on Advent Sunday. Each day they move a little closer to the hall-stand where they will reside during Christmas. The stable itself replaces the ewer and basin that normally stand in our front hall (equipped with water and towels in the summer so that muddy-footed children can wash their feet before coming inside, filled with sweets during All Saints for the wee ghoulies that come calling, and filled with inexpensive gloves during the winter for children and visitors who have forgotten theirs and need to go out in sub-zero weather). Next to the stable a small dish sits full of hay: anyone who has done a secret good deed places a single blade of hay from the dish into the manger to create a soft place for the Christ Child.

On the first Thursday in December the "family" comes over again, and this time we make sugar-cookies in the shapes of trees, bells, holly-leaves, stars (and pigs???). My old roommate from my spinster days brings Spaeculaas to hang on our tree -- memorial of our first Christmas together when we discovered that even such a simple phrase as "Christmas Cookies" can cause discord when intercultural differences are misunderstood! We may make our mincemeat at that gathering, too, though I still have some left from last year!

The tree goes up on the last Sunday (we pick it up on the way home from our annual pre-Christmas visit to the local living-history village with my Dutch friend, adding to our collection of annual photos of the growing family taken under the same antique streetlamp each year), and will stay up until Twelth Night.

Since my elder daughter, and now both daughters were accepted into their Ballet School's associated company, all the above are now slotted into the narrow time available between Nutcracker rehearsals and performances (and impressed labour on sets and costumes). So if the bigger efforts, like mincemeat and cookies, have to go by the wayside some years, we just offer up our Art to God instead of our cookies, and carry on.

Wow...will you adopt me :bow:

[AveMaria]

Yes, and adopt me, too?

I am *impressed* and I may have to borrow a few traditions. (Guess I'd better turn my cats into Christians or find a family somehow!)

[LADY DI]

Can you adopt me too???

Since St. Nicholas' feast falls during the advent season--do you celebrate it also? If you do what are some of the things you do on that day??

I'm always looking for new traditions to add to this time of the year-you already gave me few---thanks :hug: