I hope this Friday finds you well. It is a bit foggy and slightly cool around here this morning — typical November weather. I am excited for us to get together and share plans, but I must admit that Friday kind of snuck up on me this week. I thought I had more time!

Which if you think about it is the way Advent is around here. It almost always sneaks up on me. I try to have Christmas shopping done by the weekend after Thanksgiving, so between that and turkey prep I turn around and bam — it’s the first Sunday of Advent and I have thought nothing about it. So I will be pulling out my wreath and candles this week to make sure I have enough to get me through.

As for our plans, we actually have a great little set of Advent traditions that we have followed the past few years. They are simple, but they are ours. The kids love and remember them and talk about them throughout the year — Olivia even gave an oral presentation about our St. Lucy day traditions at co-op this fall. So honestly Advent is the easiest season for me — even easier than Christmas. I am still a bit stuck in the Christmas for one day mode. But more on that later this month.

The biggest kink in our Advent plans this year will be a (ahem) trip to Disney World. We knew we would go at some off-peak, cooler time when Matt returned from his deployment, but had anticipated November. Then we got the chance to go with friends who moved across the country (Oregon!) and have not seen in four years. So we jumped at the opportunity to be with them and moved our dates. But I am packing the wreath and have assured the kids that St. Nicholas will still find their shoes, even in Orlando.

So we light a candle each evening. I have yet to find a set of prayers I really love, but every year I google and find a set to use for that year. We repeat the week’s prayer every night and burn the candles at dinner. This means I usually go through more than one first and second week candle per Advent. I simply save the week four candle from the year before to use as a replacement. And we play “O Come Emmanuel”– just the chorus, right before we pray. It’s lovely.

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For the most part we keep on as usual with our days, but we do take time out to celebrate the feasts with a picture book or story and a little something. For St. Nicholas we spend some time at St. Nicholas Center. We read the online stories and the kids might choose a paper craft to do. We make cookies (nothing fancy) and leave out our shoes so the good saint can leave us chocolate coins and usually a pair of new pajamas. (This is what we usually do. This year I imagine we will be lucky to get in the story — there is one in Loyola Kids Book of Saints that we can take with us — and the shoes.)

Our Lady of Guadalupe finds us listening to the St. Juan Diego Glory Story and eating Mexican food for dinner. I also usually pull out The Legend of the Poinsettia and The Night of Las Posadas and we just immerse ourselves in south of the border Christmas traditions for a day or so. Poinsettia coloring page is usually about as fancy as I get.

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From 2011 — wasn’t she cute?

Which leads to a confession — we love to celebrate St. Lucy, but since those two feast days fall so close
together sometimes we skip a day in between. Our St. Lucy celebration is a bit unorthodox at any rate. Our oldest daughter does carry cinnamon rolls — some years homemade and some years not — to the family, but it is always in the evening. Until she is old enough to get up and make us all breakfast in bed, we simply have a big Southern breakfast for dinner and she brings out the rolls for dessert. No white dress either, but we do spend the day reading St. Lucy’s story and making a paper crown and star hats for the boys.

After St. Lucy we settle in for the long (almost two weeks!) wait for the babe to arrive in the manger. While we are waiting, we continue another tradition of lining our little wooden manger (a basket) with hay (tan yarn) to soften a bed for the Christ Child. They know when they wake on Christmas morning Jesus will be swaddled and laying on that hay and the candles in the Advent wreath will be changed for a big white one, the purple ribbon for a festive Christmas one. And it never fails to delight them to see it either.

This year we will work on learning to sing “People Look East” and will replace our morning prayer book with readings and prayers from Welcome Baby Jesus: Advent and Christmas Reflections for Families.  We also have a large stack of picture books we pull out every year and read in the evening. I will be posting about our favorites soon. I had wanted to add a couple more traditions to our list this year — a white tea for the Immaculate Conception and Jotham’s Journey, but those will have to wait for a year without travel or I am setting myself up for failure.

As for my monthly focus this month, I am going to continue focusing on my personal prayer life. Morning prayer has been going really well here. I love immersing myself in the Psalms each morning. This month I am going to focus on taking time out in the middle of the day for reflective prayer and reading. I am going to use the book Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas and plan to take about 15-20 minutes of quiet each afternoon to light a candle, read, and talk with God.

So that’s us. Now I’d love to hear about you. What Advent traditions to you follow every year? Are there any that need refreshing? Are there any you would like to add? Or are you celebrating simple this year? We can learn from that too. Are you new to the liturgical year and Advent? How do you plan to start small? Either answer in the comments below or link us to your blog post in a comment.

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