Advent Pages and Traditions

I hope to be able to post as many great sights as I can this year. We have many Advent traditions in our home, and I hope to share a few you.

Here is your first taste. The USCCB has come up with a lovely series of Advent pages, including my first Tradition, the Advent Calendar. Every year my husband painstakingly puts together the Playmobil Advent Calendar. 25 tiny boxes are assembled and filled with items such as microscopic baby hedgehogs, mice and birds. Eventually, these will fill the scene of the year. However, usually, at least one child gets eager, and rips into 20 or so days well before St. Nick's day. I then get the joy of fishing out the microscopic mammals from my vacuum canister. Thank you USCCB for making a Virtual Calendar, one without any clean up required!

The Advent Calendar provides a way for us to count the days, and in tradition, are filled with scripture. Often as the O Antiphon days arrive, the window has the Antiphon of the day in it. No Hedgehogs involved.

Getting Ready for Advent

It does make me laugh a bit to think about preparing for a time of preparing, but such is my nature. Advent with kids does take a few days of preparation. Not only do I have to find all my "Advent Accessories" but the remaining remnants of Halloween (ie that pumpkin on the porch) need to be dealt with. But, it is not just about the "stuff", it is about the mental preparation for the season. It takes me a week of reminding everyone that Advent, like Lent, is a season of prayer and fasting.

When the world around us is throwing Christmas at us before Halloween, we need to step back, and prepare to prepare. Our home is in the world, but not of it. Our preparations for Christmas are not limited to buying gifts, decorating and baking, but preparing our hearts. Sure, baking is part of that, in every cookie we give away, we are giving a bit of us, and for some kids in the house, giving away cookies is a sacrifice.

What are you doing to get ready to prepare the Way of the Lord?