Advent Calendar - December 25
To all who read here, may your travels be safe, your food rich, your body healthy, your love sincere and your gifts just what you want. But most of all, may you experience Jesus, the Gift Who never disappoints. From our house to yours. . .
Merry Christmas!
Advent Calendar - December 24The sap of the frankincense tree (Boswellia carteri or Boswellia thurifera) dries into hard, yellowish brown lumps of bum resin known as frankincense. .... The English word “frankincense” comes from the Old French words franc encens, meaning pure or high-quality incense. Although it was most commonly used as incense in ancient times, frankincense was also prescribed as medicine.
The sap of the myrrh tree (Commiphora myrrha) dries into hard, reddish brown lumps of gum resin known as myrrh. It was used as a medicine and a component of perfume and incense.
Advent Calendar - December 23
Christmas Fact:
In Matthew 2, Magi from the East led by a star journey to Jerusalem and then to Bethlehem to worship the newborn king.
The word "magi" comes from the ancient Greek magoi, plural of magos and from the Old Persian word magu. Both terms referred specifically to a class of scholar-priests originally from the ancient land of Media, now part of Iran... The magi were famed for their knowledge of astronomy, astrology, dream interpretation, philosophy , and religious ritual.
Advent Calendar - December 22
Christmas Fact:
George Frederick Handel’s (1685-1759) Messiah is perhaps the most popular piece of classical music associated with the Christmas season.... Handel never intended Messiah to be connected with the Christmas season. In fact, he wrote the oratorio in the late summer of 1741 and premiered it around Easter of the following year. Subsequent performances during Handel’s lifetime also took place around Easter.
Advent Calendar - December 21
Christmas Fact:
According to early Christian tradition, Jesus was born in one of the caves that local people used to shelter animals. As early as the second century A.D., pilgrims began to visit that cave. The Roman emperor Hadrian (76-138 A.D.) constructed a shrine to the pagan god Adonis over this site. In approximately 325 A.D. after the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity, the empress Helena (c. 248-328 A.D.) had the temple to Adonis destroyed and built the Church of the Nativity over the presumed site of Jesus’ birth. . . .
Today the Church of the Nativity is an Eastern Orthodox shrine. The cave in which Jesus was born lies underneath the church. Known as the “Grotto of the Nativity,” this underground chamber is a site of intense religious devotion for Christians of many different denominations.
Advent Calendar - December 20
Christmas Fact:
Both Gospel accounts of the Christmas story name the birth place of Jesus as Bethlehem. In modern Israel, Bethlehem is located about five miles south of Jerusalem. Its Hebrew meaning is “house of bread” located as it is in a fertile zone of the Judean desert.
Bethlehem was the birthplace of the King David (Old Testament), from whom Jesus is a descendant, according to the genealogy in Matthew. The Jewish prophet Micah also predicted that Messiah would be born in the town of Bethlehem.
Advent Calendar - December 19
Christmas Fact:
Angels played a big part in the first Christmas. And what do angels actually look like? Opinions about that have changed over the centuries:
The very first depictions of angels date back to the time of the Roman Empire. Early Christian paintings of angels rendered them as ordinary men rather than as winged, spiritual beings. Some artists, however, garbed their angels in white robes, resembling a Roman senator’s toga, in order to symbolize their power and dignity. . . . By the fifth century Christian artists from the Byzantine Empire began to depict angels with a disk of light, called a nimbus, behind their heads.
In medieval times most western European artists portrayed angels as masculine in face and form. This trend reversed itself from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries. After that time western European angels acquired softer, more feminine or androgynous looks. Sometimes they appeared as chubby children or toddlers. Artists often depicted angels with harps or other musical instruments. These emblems signify what some consider to be the primary occupation of angels – praising God.
Advent Calendar - December 18
Christmas Fact:
The announcement by the angel to the teenager Mary that she would bear a son by the Holy Ghost (the Annunciation) has been a source of fascination from the time of the early church to now. We still write songs and monologues and plays trying to work out for ourselves things like what about Mary made her the one God picked? How did she feel about the way God overrode her plans? What thoughts went through her mind in the days and weeks that followed, when the angel's announcement went from being an abstract idea to the takeover of her body? Did she actually handle this life-shattering event with the ease the Luke account suggests?
When, in the middle of the fourth century, Church officials in Rome scheduled December 25th as the day to celebrate the birth of Christ, the date nine months earlier when Mary would have become pregnant – March 25th – became a holy day. It was called the Feast of Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Many medieval kingdoms also chose March 25th as the day on which to begin the new year (Julian Calendar).
Advent Calendar - December 17
Christmas Fact:
Every Sunday of Advent people in churches all across the world light candles in Advent wreaths.
"Many assign special significance to each of the four wreath candles. Some say they represent the four gifts of the Holy Spirit: hope, joy, peace, and love. Others use them to represent the themes of the Advent season. Thus they may signify hope, preparation, joy, love, or light. Still others tell the story of Jesus' birth with the candles, allowing each to stand for some of the important figures associated with the Nativity, such as the prophets, angels, shepherds, and magi." - Encyclopedia of Christmas p. 9
This year the first Sunday of Advent in 2008 was on November 30th. On the third Sunday of Advent (the Sunday just past) some churches celebrate White Gift Sunday. The tradition began in a Methodist church in Ohio in 1904. People were encouraged to bring whatever gifts they could, all wrapped in white paper to avoid comparison. These gifts were then blessed in the service and later distributed to poor families and people in homeless shelters etc.
Advent Calendar - December 16
Christmas Fact:
A Chrismon tree adapts the traditional Christmas tree to more strictly Christian uses. It consists of an evergreen tree decorated with traditional Christian symbols of Jesus. In fact the word “Chrismon” resulted from the combination of the two words “Christ” and “Monogram.” Originally only monograms of Christ decorated the tree. . . Only the colors white and gold appear on these oranments. These are the liturgical colors for Christmas Day. White represents Jesus’ purity and perfection, while gold stands for his majesty and glory. White lights may further embellish the tree, reminding the viewers that Jesus is the “Light of the world” (John 8:12).
Advent Calendar - December 15
Christmas Fact:
A fun tradition observed by some families during the holidays is to put together a Christmas-themed jigsaw puzzle. A large board or card table works fine as a puzzle holder. Spread out the pieces and leave them out so they are a constant temptation to whoever has a few minutes to work at the puzzle – until the picture is complete.
In southern Europe, where the Christmas tree never found much favor, home Christmas decoration focuses around the Nativity scene. The Spanish call the scene nacimiento (meaning "birth"), or a belén (meaning "Bethlehem"), the Italians call it a presépio (meaning "crib"), and the French call it crèche (meaning "crib"). In the same way that many North Americans collect Christmas tree ornaments, many southern European families slowly build a treasured collection of Nativity figurines. – Encyclopedia of Christmas p. 410 Advent Calendar - December 14
Christmas Fact:
The Nativity figurine market thrives in North America too - judging by the wares available here, and here and here.
Advent Calendar - December 13
Christmas Fact:
The Nativity scene also rooted itself firmly in French soil, especially in the southern region of Provence. The first manger scenes included only those figures most related to the story of the Nativity: Mary, Joseph, the baby Jesus, the shepherds, etc. In the eighteenth century, however, people began to display a multitude of characters in their home Nativity scenes. . . .
In 1803 small clay statuettes from Provence, called santons (or "little saints") appeared at the Christmas fair in Marseille. These santons became an essential element of the French Nativity scene. In addition to characters mentioned in the biblical accounts of the Nativity, the Provencal santons represented a wide variety of ordinary French townspeople, such as the baker, the mayor, the fishmonger, the village idiot and others. . . Like their Italian counterparts, French Nativity scenes depicted the birth of Christ taking place in a local setting, such as a village in Provence.
Advent Calendar - December 12
Christmas Fact:
The popularity of living Nativity scenes gave rise to another custom, recreating the crib scene with figurines...– Encyclopedia of Christmas p. 408-9
In the 17th century families began to create their own Nativity scenes. These became more elaborate with time. The art form reached spectacular heights in eighteenth-century Naples Italy. Families competed with each other to produce the most elegant and elaborate crib scenes. These scenes expanded far beyond the manger to include village backdrops, ordinary villagers, ruined Roman temples, angels and even foreigners whom the families thought might have rushed to Bethlehem had they known of the miraculous birth.
Advent Calendar - December 11The earliest known Christmas tree ornaments were apples. Medieval actors used them to decorate the paradise tree, the central prop of the paradise play, a medieval European mystery play often performed on December 24th. The apples represented the temptation of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. Later, unconsecrated communion wafers were added to the tree, representing the salvation offered to humankind by Jesus Christ.– Encyclopedia of Christmas, p. 439
Advent Calendar - December 10 Advent Calendar - December 9
Christmas Fact:
St. Francis of Assisi (c. 1181-1226) generally receives the credit for popularizing the Nativity scene as we know it. At Christmas time in (1223?) 1224 he recreated the manger scene using real people and animals in a cave near the Italian village of Greccio. Mass was said in this novel setting and St. Francis preached about the humble birth of the newborn King. Onlookers enjoyed this re-enactment of Christ’s birth so much that the custom soon spread throughout Italy and Europe.Encyclopedia of Christmas p. 408
Advent Calendar - December 8
Christmas Fact:The poinsettia originally hails from Mexico. The leaves that crown the end of each poinsettia stalk undergo a seasonal color change in December, turning from green to red. As Christianity spread across Mexico during the colonial era, this color change turned poinsettias into a popular Christmas decoration. The Mexicans call the plant flor de la Nochebuena or "Christmas Eve flower".
– Encyclopedia of Christmas p. 474 Lots more about poinsettias on the Poinsettia Pages
Advent Calendar - December 7
Christmas Fact:The earliest uses of a crib in worship date back to fourth-century Rome. Of the three masses observed at Christmas, one was called Ad Praesepe (meaning "to the crib"). This mass took place in the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, at a shrine built from boards believed to have come from the original stable of the Nativity in Bethlehem. Churches throughout Italy and Europe gradually adopted the custom of saying mass over a crib at Christmas time.
– Encyclopedia of Christmas p. 407,408
Basilica Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome. (Dragging your mouse across the image causes it to scroll around the entire room.)
Advent Calendar - December 6
Christmas Fact: Children in the Netherlands receive Christmas presents on St. Nicholas’s Day, December 6th. According to old Dutch folk beliefs, each year St. Nicholas and his helper, Swarte Piet, or Black Peter, sail from Spain to Holland in a ship loaded with presents for good children. Nowadays Black Peter not only carries St. Nicholas’s sack of presents, but also brandishes a birch rod which he uses to discipline undeserving children. Truly troublesome youngsters face sterner punishment. Black Peter tosses them into his sack and carries them back to Spain with him.
Encyclopedia of Christmas p. 54.
Wikipedia on Black Peter
