The Liturgical Year begins with the First Sunday of Advent, four weeks before Christmas Day, the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is a season of preparation and waiting; waiting for the Light to return to the world. There are a variety of practices and resources that can assist individuals and families in slowing down during this time of year when the world around us picks up the frantic pace of consumerism. Advent God, sustain us as we journey to the stable. Strengthen our hands and make firm our feeble knees, Open our eyes to the dawning of the sun, and guide our steps on the pathways of peace. Amen. Advent wreaths have their source in pagan practice. Turn an old wagon wheel on the side, hang it up, bore a few holes, and continue to add candles as the days get shorter. (Its sort of the reverse of Tenebrae (a long office originally spread over several weeks in the spring in which the number of candles was reduced as the days lengthened.) In the 17th and 18th centuries, German churches, particularly of a pietist sort, invented the modern Advent wreath as a focus of domestic devotions around the table. It was a time of sharing Scripture, praying, singing, and lighting candles, as the family ritualized its way toward the end of Advent Except among the heirs of some of those German pietist groups, Advent wreaths were largely unheard of in liturgical and non-liturgical churches until the early 1950s. It seems that the candle companies made a little wire Advent set, again for domestic use and distributed through the Sunday School. By the mid-fifties, they began to appear in the churches and by the 1970s had become virtually universal. As for the color of the candles, the marketers to the liturgical traditions (before the Council) put in three purple and a pink, a practice that followed the color scheme of the vestments in use at the time among Roman Catholics, Anglo-Catholics, and extremely high church Lutherans. A slightly later affectation among Anglicans was to substitute Advent blue (with due respect to the Sarum Use which is its own historical problem!). Prior to this commercialization of the whole thing, the tradition had known only two colors of candles: bleached and unbleached. Bleached for Sundays and Feasts, unbleached for ferial use. Except, perhaps, in those places where the vestments are still moderated on Advent III, I suggest that the Advent wreath be adorned with white candles. It is a little nonsensical when the remainder of the Advent rite has been reformed, the vestments and paraments are consistent through the season, and the only vestige of the shift in color scheme is in the Advent wreath candles, that ancient tradition, circa 1955. Attributed to The Right Reverend J. Neil Alexander, Bishop of Atlanta, ret.
Posted on: Wed, 26 Nov 2014 14:40:30 +0000
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