Advent has come...

Today my favorite month of the year started: December. I am a huge Christmas fan, I love everything about the holiday season – the decorations, lights, candles, biscuits and especially the cheesy and sometimes annoying Christmas songs that are played 24/7. When I was younger I couldn’t wait for Christmas Eve to arrive and wanted those three weeks until the 24^th to be over as fast as possible. Nowadays I enjoy the anticipation. Nevertheless, I still own an Advent calendar to count down the days. 

The Advent calendar is a tradition that derives from German Lutherans in the beginning of the 19^th century. Some families would count down the 24 days until Christmas by drawing chalk lines on their doors for every day beginning on December 1^st. Other families had different, more elaborate traditions, such as lighting a candle for each day, which might have been the origin of the Advent wreath. The first “real” Advent calendar was handmade in 1851, the first printed Advent calendars were created in the early 20^th century. Today there are many different types of calendars, the simplest ones show pictures behind the 24 doors and the most common ones reveal chocolate or sometimes other sweets. My mother used to fill our calendars herself with our favorite sweets or sometimes little presents. 

 Another advent tradition I already mentioned is the Advent wreath. It’s definitely not as interesting as the Advent calendar for a child, but I grew to love this tradition very much over the last few years, because I appreciate the nice and peaceful atmosphere candles create. Like the Advent calendar the Advent wreath probably comes from the Protestants. Usually the wreath contains four candles – sometimes a fifth in the middle – which stand for the four Advent Sundays before Christmas. Every Sunday you light another one, until on the last Sunday before Christmas all four are lit. If there is a fifth candle, you light it on Christmas Eve. In Catholic churches the traditional colors for the candles are violet and rose, rose for the third Sunday known as Gaudete Sunday. In my family we don’t necessarily follow this color code strictly, but at least we always have a different colored third candle. 

In addition to these two main traditions during advent, there are many other things that make this time so special for me, such as baking biscuits, watching cheesy Christmas movies, going to the Christmas market and of course spending time with my family.
It’s a very beautiful time of the year, especially if it snows. The only bad thing is that I’m terrible at choosing presents for other people and I’m always having trouble finding the right things to give to my family, which makes these few weeks also very stressful. But I guess everything has a downside…