#if you can give lutherans nothing else. you gotta hand it to us for advent wreaths. we kinda went off with those

[queerprayers]

do you have any tips for protestant christians who want to practice advent in a more ritualistic way?

Happy Advent, beloved! I love this question!

Hopefully this isn't too obvious but just in case: Advent wreaths were originally a Lutheran tradition and they're my favorite holiday ritual! I'm in the minority in that my church's Advent color is blue, but many people's are purple and pink. The Wikipedia page lists some different traditions—some people give a meaning to each candle. Generally people will have five and light one for each week of Advent and then one for Christmas. Advent is cut short this year (Advent 4 and Christmas Eve are the same day) but it's still never too late to start participating in a season! One day of mindful Advent is more precious than weeks of half-hearted Advent.

I have blue and gold candle holders, but many places sell Advent-specific candles and holders, or you can just get four or five candles (real or fake) from around the house and arrange them! I haven't gotten around to it yet this year but I like gathering evergreen branches from outside and arranging them in more of a proper wreath, but a fake wreath would work too, or just candles on a cloth or table.

I also saw this 20-minute Advent candle set, where you can light a candle each day and let it burn down while praying/meditating/writing. You could set a timer and do something similar with any type of candle. Candles are a staple of winter holidays for a reason—light and warmth, obviously, and there's something about having a natural source of those things existing in your house when so much of the rest of your life may be artificial. I thank God my house has heating, but I also seek out the ways this earth provides what we need, if we only know where to look.

Some form of counting down to Christmas is a main theme of Advent traditions, and I don't think this is a bad thing at all, although I do see my Advent wreath as more of a fulfillment than a countdown. I always encourage people to take at least a moment for just Advent. We could look at Lent as a countdown to Easter, but we might miss the journey. And after all, Holy Week and Easter is the culmination of our calendar, not Christmas. We are still in the beginning.

My family doesn't usually put up a Christmas tree until around the 23rd, and I don't listen to Christmas carols until Christmas Eve. I don't refuse to participate in secular/cultural Christmas events/traditions before then, but Christmas as religious practice is twelve days for us, starting the 25th. I have time to make room, to prepare. I'm listening to Advent music now, to ground myself in time. I don't say this because I think everyone should necessarily do this (by all means, find room for joy wherever you can), but because an Advent value that I find meaning in is patience. Christmas exists, joy exists, salvation exists—but what happens in the time before those things? What happens if we're not there yet, if we perhaps have to wait our whole lives? We do not know the future, but there are things we can see, and even more things we can trust in. How can we practice hoping for it all?

This year I'm reading Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas (the last gift my grandfather gave me), and it's marking my days in a similar way candles do—connecting me with the world, setting aside time, bringing me back to why I exist the way that I do. There are countless devotional/topical books out there—as well as Watch for the Light, I would recommend Preparing for Christmas by Richard Rohr and Accompanied by Angels: Poems of the Incarnation by Luci Shaw (which can double as a Lenten/Easter book as well). I'm also looking forward to reading in future years Celtic Advent by David Cole and WinterSong by Madeleine L'Engle & Luci Shaw.

If you don't usually attend worship services, Advent is a lovely time to start—it's the new year, after all! My city has a caroling night downtown, and you could look for similar events in your community. You could also start new worship traditions—my uncle hosts a Christmas carol singing circle every year, and his apartment is squished full of happy people, some Christian and some not, singing until the neighbors complain.

Speaking of the new year, that's what this is for many of us, and one way we can acknowledge that is by thinking about the past year and/or the year to come. What was last Advent like for you? Where are you now? Why are you seeking out more ritual this year? Are there future seasons in the church year that you want to further observe? What joy and grief and community do you see on the road ahead of you? What can you not even begin to imagine? Advent can be a beginning for all of it, if you let it. And Advent is the ultimate time to contemplate the past and the future—as we remember Jesus coming two thousand years ago, as we experience him every day, and as we look to a second coming that none of us understand but can occasionally stand to ponder.

There are the little things, too—writing Christmas cards is very ritualistic for me, as well as making gifts, and preparing for Christmas in a material way, especially if it's for others, can be a lovely ritual! Volunteering, preparing a home, creating, writing, taking a walk--anything, really, can be a ritual if we do it purposely. We don't always have to add something to our life—we can live something we already live in a new way.

And then there's the other kind of practice: emptying. We talk about this most when we encounter Lent, but I think there's a place for it here, too (and always). I don't mean abandon our responsibilities/hobbies/relationships, but most of us have too much. It is a blessing to have, but it can also be a blessing to let go. Many of us overwork ourselves during December, at work, at school, financially, socially, around the house. I've learned to look at busy-ness as a gift, but I also work to not fill up my life until there's no room for the season. There are people who fast during Advent, but there are other ways to make space in our lives to fill up with God, and Advent encourages us to spend time in that space. God is coming, a thief in the night, a late guest, an overlooked baby. Do you have room? Do you still have the attention span and energy? Will you even notice?

Christmas is many things to many people, and preparing for it is similarly diverse. I'm carrying a lot of grief with me this year, from both family and world tragedy. I know a lot of people who feel pressured to be happy during the holidays, and that breaks my heart—and it also makes me wonder how much having a ritualistic Advent since I was a kid has helped me avoid that. Happiness was never a value my family held—it was beautiful, but not inherently holy. Emotions come and go. Love exists infinitely, and patience and hope can be practiced and lived out regardless.

There are so many traditions, especially in the US, that leave people hungering for ritual and material practice—I've found a lot of physicality in Lutheranism, similar to my Catholic family, but I know there are those who have never really had that. When we seek ritual, it's often because there's something (or many things) in our practice either growing up or currently that we don't have and seek—whether that's the sensory experiences of incense and stained glass, the daily habits of rosary or novena, the liturgical practice of seasons and services, choral and hymn-singing, contemporary music, contemplation, academia, casualness, relatability, mystery, social justice, huge gatherings, tiny meetings, or any of the other Christian experiences that usually traditions don't or can't have all at once. When we seek ritual, we seek what we don't have, but often find what we already have as well. So many things are rituals that we take for granted because we've always had them or gotten used them. Seek new rituals, and seek what is already in your life that you can decide to do. Take your traditions, and find the traditions you didn't receive but hunger for, and make a life. You have time—Advent happens every year, and as far as we know and can hope, we will have many more Advents.

Ultimately, ritual is doing it all on purpose. It's finding rhythm. So much of our lives are accidental, and this can be beautiful and holy, but you have come seeking the things we invite. And yet even things that happen to us can become purposeful, as Mary teaches us: "Let it be with me according to your word." Whether she had a choice is sometimes discussed, but to me often the more relevant question is how she dealt with what came her way. Ritual is taking what we are given and doing it on purpose, and Advent gives us a long tradition, passed down through generations, of active waiting. We have no choice but to wait for the future, but today we will do it with our eyes open. Act as if the world is going to turn upside down—and you will notice it is, all the time.

In Watch for the Light, Henri Nouwen writes, "A waiting person is a patient person. The word patience means the willingness to stay where we are and live the situation out to the full in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us. Impatient people are always expecting the real thing to happen somewhere else and therefore want to go elsewhere. The moment is empty. But patient people dare to stay where they are. Patient living means to live actively in the present and wait there. Waiting, then, is not passive. It involves nurturing the moment, as a mother nurtures the child that is growing in her."

Whatever rituals you invite in or find that you already have, however you nurture the moments that make up this season, I pray they make room in your heart for what God can bring. As Rilke tells us (in teaching how to approach art, but what else are the mysteries of this season?), "Everything is gestation and then bringing forth. To let each impression and each germ of a feeling come to completion wholly in itself, in the dark, in the inexpressible, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one's own intelligence, and await with deep humility and patience the birth-hour of a new clarity."

<3 Johanna