The first Sunday in the Christmas season is called Advent Sunday. It is always the nearest Sunday to St Andrew's Day (November 30). In Germany on Advent Sunday, a holly wreath with four red candles in the centre decorates the house. One candle is lit on each Sunday in Advent and the last on Christmas Eve.
Children often like to count the days until Christmas using an Advent Calendar. They open one window each day to find the picture, prize or message inside.
Things to do
- Set up an Advent wreath and light the first candle on Advent Sunday.
- Hang up your Advent calendar or make a new one.
- Start using Christmas serviettes and other linen.
- Sing a song...
The Silver Stars - J. Wheeler & W.G. James
The silver stars are in the sky
The red-gold moon is riding high.
Oh, sleep, my little one, sleep!
Once long ago against her breast
A mother hush'd her babe to rest,
Who was the prince of Heav'n above,
The Lord of gentleness and love.
Oh, sleep, my little one, sleep!
The Boobook calls across the night,
The brown moths flutter in the light.
Oh, sleep, my little one, sleep!
In Bethlehem long, long ago
When roads and paddocks gleam'd with snow,
On that same night that mother mild
Lulled into dreams her Royal Child.
Oh, sleep, my little one, sleep!
- Read a story...
Lighting a Candle
Excerps from "A Swedish Christmas" pub. Tre Tryckare, Sweden, 1954.
A soldier from the ... war relates in a letter home: "We had a most quiet Christmas Eve... I was relieved at 9:30. Then I went to my cot in the barracks. And I could open the package... In it was the candlestick with the candle. At first I was disappointed. But when I had lighted the candle, everything was different. I thought of you there at home. I saw you. what a strange thing a light is, I thought. It burns and glows by offering itself... So natural, as if life were like that too, like the light. I sat there and looked at it until it had almost burned down. It was like a Christmas sermon, that candle. Everything was different... I remember from my childhood the hands of my Grandmother as she lighted the candles... And as the warm light played over her hands, I could feel the gestures of a thousand years, of an ancient ceremony... 'I am the light of the world'."
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