it's almost Advent

preparing our hearts and homes

Welcome back readers, and welcome, new readers –

This Sunday is the First of Advent, a day that is second only to Easter and Christmas in terms of the joy and festivity with which it is celebrated here at the Bruderhof: just as the days darken and get colder, we enter the season of joy.

The days leading up to Advent are filled with expectation and the practical preparations described in the carol by Eleanor Farjeon that we sing often at this time of year:

People, look east. The time is near
Of the crowning of the year.
Make your house fair as you are able,
Trim the hearth and set the table.
People, look east and sing today:
Love, the Guest, is on the way.

In this post we’ll describe some of the ways we get ready for Advent. Customs vary from family to family and from community to community: Norann in New South Wales, Australia, celebrates differently than the members of the Bruderhof in Austria who visit the Viennese Weihnachtsmarkt or the ones in Paraguay singing carols in Guarani. We all treasure different traditions (please tell us about yours in the comments!), but whatever our celebrations look like, the important thing is to ready our hearts for the coming of the Christ Child.

Trudi – in Spring Valley, southwest Pennsylvania

I’ve sometimes wondered how to prepare my heart for Christmas. How do I genuinely celebrate something generated by a calendar and smothered in tradition? (Not to mention commercialization.) But I find myself returning more and more to a childlike acceptance that embraces this time of year for what it is: a joyful celebration and proclamation of Christ’s birth. I’ve come to realize that traditions help to mark out these special weeks, distinguishing them from the rest. We celebrate our own birthdays once a year; Christmas is the most glorious birthday celebration of all.

As young people in the Bruderhof, I and my peers are prone to question the meaning of 100 year-old traditions. I think that questioning a seemingly lifeless tradition is important, but sometimes a little more investigation proves that what seemed just a hollow tradition is loaded with meaning, just waiting for rediscovery and a fresh burst of energy. Let me tell you about a tradition that I have new appreciation for.

One of the biggest and most significant Bruderhof traditions is “Advent Breakfast”, a communal breakfast on the first Sunday of Advent. Sure, we eat lunch together every day, 200 to 300 people sharing a meal in one dining hall. But gathering to share breakfast feels very different, and that’s just what makes it so special. It heralds in one of the most important seasons of the year.

Rolls, breakfast meat, an oven-baked omelet, a pastry, orange juice, a hot cup of coffee, white tablecloths, Christmas-themed napkins and table decor. A room newly and extravagantly decorated with swirls of stars arranged on the walls or perhaps star-shaped lamps hanging from the ceiling. Each year, decorations might be a little different, and wall art, whether masterpieces or children’s artwork, is equally enjoyed. A large wreath is somewhere in the room, with four large red candles to be lit one by one marking each week of Advent.

As you can imagine, the children especially love Advent breakfast. The dining hall doors remain closed until the whole community has gathered; entering the room all together somehow adds to the unusualness of it all.

I still remember—I must have been about six—holding tight to my dad’s warm hand and smiling back up at the adults who greeted me with “Happy Advent!” while live brass music sounded out “Joy to the World” and “Go Tell It On the Mountain”. It seemed forever until finally someone opened the doors and my sisters and I could follow my parents in to find a seat. But not just any seat—somewhere in the vast dining hall was a plate with each person’s name next to it. An extra touch of love.

Now I’m behind those closed doors, getting an Advent breakfast ready for some eagerly waiting children. I and the other young adults have the fun of preparing the food and making the room festively ready. And, yes, there’s one more important detail: the Advent Calendar. Basically, counting down the days to Christmas in a visual way is a highlight for children. This year, one of the young men constructed a lighthouse. (Don’t ask how we got that idea – it’s complicated.) And at Advent breakfast, a child will open the first of numerous “windows” in its cardboard walls to reveal a Christmas character or large ornament.

The Advent calendar is still in process, and will probably be finished late Saturday night

And what’s the purpose of calendars, of decorations? It’s an outward expression of the expectation in our hearts, the same expectation expressed by the Old Testament prophets whose words we read at Advent breakfast.

We’re counting the days until Jesus’ birthday; we’re waiting for Him to come again.

Marianne – in Woodcrest, upstate New York

I grew up in a home where the line from the song quoted above “Make your house fair as you are able” was taken very literally. In the days leading up to Advent all the pictures would come down and the walls would be bare for a few days. Then, on the Saturday before the First of Advent, the bareness would be transformed into an abundance of decoration worthy of the Ghost of Christmas Present, with “the walls and ceiling…so hung with living green, that it looked a perfect grove” and on every wall in every room drawings and paintings – some homemade, some reproductions of Old Masters – of the Christ Child, angels, kings, and shepherds, the pictures surrounded by cut-out stars. Above each of the eight children’s beds would be fixed an “Advent branch” – a fir branch decorated with stars and ornaments (getting the branches in place was my dad’s contribution). Each child got an Advent calendar by their bed as well, in addition to the poster-size one Mom made for the living room. Decorating the living room, halls, and four bedrooms in one day was no small feat, and because Mom wanted the transformed house to be a surprise – something she remembered from her own childhood – the younger children were sent on an outing with my dad until it was almost dark. Then to come in, rosy-cheeked from early winter cold, to a wonderland smelling of pine and sparkling with tinsel, was to step into a season that was marked out from everyday life, truly the “crowning of the year.”

The same transformation happened at school, but here it was the handiwork of the children. Decorating Day in Woodcrest School is usually the Friday before Advent (it’s happening as I write this), with a whole day dedicated to making paper chains, cutting out stars, and bringing in as many fir branches as possible; one memorable year we transformed the school assembly room into a Christmas tree forest with dozens of trees.

Pictures made by the 5th and 6th grades waiting to be put up on the school walls

Going around to my friends’ houses to see their decorations was exciting as well, with the highlight always being Norann’s, where a shelf in the corner of the living room would be made to look like the hills around Bethlehem, with rocks piled into hillsides and covered with moss and little trees. Dozens of carved manger figures (which her grandfather whittled and added to each year) were arranged on paths and fields on their way to the stable.

Photo from Norann – here’s the same manger scene (in a scaled-back setting), now almost 80 years old and still being enjoyed by a great-granddaughter

As I write this, the walls of our house are bare, although there is a dusting of glitter in the living room from the pine cone crafts we’ve been working on. The five-year-old is full of questions: what pictures she will have by her bed, where the Christmas tree will go, what will go on her branch, how many days until Advent breakfast. As the boxes of decorations are brought out and everyone rediscovers their favorite treasures, we remember previous Advents and plan another season of candle-lit dinners and celebrations with our neighbors.

The classic holiday combination of hot glue gun plus glitter

One year I spent Christmas in Bethlehem. This was unforgettable, but was very different from the Christmas celebrations and traditions that have meant so much to me, and which I am passing on to my children. I treasure the memory of standing in Manger Square as the clock struck midnight, just as I treasure gathering with our community to sing carols and feast on traditional holiday foods, none of which has much connection to first century Judea. After the episode with the greenery, the Ghost of Christmas Present whisks Scrooge away from the joyful abundance of a Victorian Christmas to a “barren waste” and then to a “frightful range of rocks” and a “solitary lighthouse” (possibly the inspiration for Trudi’s Advent calendar), and in all these places they find Christmas truly celebrated.

Norann – in Danthonia, New South Wales, Australia

Seasonally, Advent and Christmas in Australia means the arrival of summer. Heart-wise, this can be quite a shift for those of us raised in the northern hemisphere where the arrival of a wintertime sets up helpful metaphors around light coming into darkness.

I’ll be honest: during my first couple of draughty Christmases here I tried to repeat the routine that Marianne so beautifully described – only to discover I couldn’t find pine; the few sprigs of eucalyptus I arranged perished promptly in the heat; the fans blew all the candles out; and mulled wine just made people feel faint.

Even though pine for decorating is readily available now (we’ve planted thousands of trees, of numerous varieties, here over the almost twenty-five years since our Australian community began), the outward shift that a Christmas Down Under compelled me to make has had lasting changes in my heart.

Because no matter the outer context, we try to focus – just as our Bruderhof forebears did for twenty years in the tropical jungles of Paraguay – on Advent as a time when everything is turned upside down because Christ is born, and a moment for our hearts to still and become a threshold of freedom and peace and expectation.

One tradition that we have continued, and one that clearly delineates the special nature of this time of preparation, is that of the “Advent angels.” This custom was introduced to the Bruderhof in the 1930s by two young women, Emi-Margret Arnold and Annemarie Wächter, who were studying to become kindergarten teachers in a women’s college in Thale, Germany. There the girls from the oldest class would sing the seventeenth century song “Vom Himmel Hoch” (From heaven high bright angels come) in the dormitory halls at midnight on First of Advent eve to usher in the four holy weeks of Advent.

Ever since then on our communities, household members will don white “angel gowns” and sing with lighted candles through each community home on the night before the first of Advent. Often, a little gift or Christmas ornament will be left for each child. I remember looking forward to this with great anticipation during my childhood (perhaps with an extra dose of awe as both my mother and sister had died by the time I was seven) because this other-worldly visitation seemed to me not only an important beginning of the Advent season, but a moment of deep connection with my family in Heaven.

Due to the warm Australian weather and our far-flung homestead dwellings, here in Danthonia we’ve re-imagined the Advent angel tradition to be a time of community gathering after sunset on the Saturday before the first of Advent. The entire community gathers at a designated location, and, after waiting for a short time, angels carrying torches appear on the roof of a nearby shed. They sing several glorious, a capella carols in layered harmonies – the childrens’ eyes are large with wonder, their faces tipped upwards as the torchlight illumines the scene – then disappear and re-emerge carrying baskets of unlit candles. Everyone, babies right up through grandparents, files by and receives a candle. Will it stay lit all the way home, or will the wind prevail? Regardless, we each carry with us the reminder of the Light that shines in the darkness, which no night can ever overcome.

What we’re enjoying

Norann

All our three sons are home for the next couple of months – it’s summer break from university – which means feasting, working, sporting, campfiring, and, under duress, singing together.

Most recently, we had the opportunity to sing carols in Inverell as our town’s new Christmas tree (imported from Germany) was lit. While each of our sons have their own unique singing style and tone, we harmonize together well. The tree was lit early as a welcome storm approached and blessed in the entire area with much-needed rain.

Beside my usual Advent routine of listening to and reading anything and everything by Fleming Rutledge (who insists that we vehemently resist doing “Advent lite”) and Plough’s Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas, I’m savoring Lucy S. R. Austen’s well-crafted, thoroughly researched, and insightful biography Elisabeth Elliot: A Life. I’ve read and appreciated Elliot’s writings over the years, but never knew the details of her life of obedience to God. I’m only a quarter of the way in – so no spoilers here – but I’m already absorbed by the honesty, detail, and faithfulness of the story.

Marianne

The Christmas books and music are already in circulation in our house, and it’s hard to chose just one to recommend. I’m about halfway through reading Rumer Godden’s The Story of Holly and Ivy to my youngest daughter, just as my mom read it every year to my sisters and me; if you know any little girls who love dolls and stories with magical happy endings, this is a great one to read to them.

Trudi

Music is entwined in all my Christmas memories. My favorite albums for the season are the ones I grew up on: Delmoni string quartet’s Rejoice albums were inspiration to the Brinkmann string ensemble and Sunday nights our neighbors were treated to Christmas carols on violin, viola, cello, piano, and guitar (or whatever combination of instrument players happened to be home that year). Two years ago on my way back to Korea, I stopped through Germany for a few days. It was early November, but close enough to Christmas to celebrate it: my dad and I played a few favorites “In the Bleak Midwinter”, “Once in Royal David’s City”, and others. Just a guitar and one violin, but it was a blessed Christmas moment.

And, for Advent, I’ve been thinking about the theme of waiting and stumbled over an old 2021 article from a Catholic Newsletter, Advent patience: Lessons from Father Henri Nouwen by John Lewis. It touched and encouraged me. I hope it does the same for you as we enter the Advent season.

And one more thing…

During Covid times, when we couldn’t invite friends and neighbors to celebrate and sing carols with us, the Bruderhof produced two video concerts with performances contributed from people from all over the world. The days of socially isolating are thankfully just a memory now, but we hope you and your children enjoy hearing and seeing some of our favorite Christmas songs.

The Christmas Spectacular

The Christmas Spectacular 2.0

Happy Advent!