This article will inspire you to bring back these old customs that have been swept under the rug the past few decades! Do you want your children to love the Faith? Then inundate them with sweet traditions like the ones discussed below! Our Faith then becomes a Living Faith as we celebrate the liturgical year…..an ongoing journey that we can grow with as the years go by!

This is our Advent wreath that a dear friend made. Tea lights sit atop the Advent-painted wooden cylinders. It is lovely….

from Around the Year With the Trapp Family – by Maria von Trapp

Read Part Two Here.

In the week before the first Sunday in Advent, we began to inquire where we could obtain the various things necessary to make an Advent wreath.

“A what?” was the invariable answer, accompanied by a blank look.

And we learned that nobody seemed to know what an Advent wreath is. (This was fifteen years ago.) For us it was not a question of whether or not we would have an Advent wreath. The wreath was a must. Advent would be unthinkable without it. The question was only how to get it in a country where nobody seemed to know about it.

Back in Austria we used to go to a toy shop and buy a large hoop, about three feet in diameter. Then we would tie hay around it, three inches thick, as a foundation; and around this we would make a beautiful wreath of balsam twigs. The whole was about three feet in diameter and ten inches thick. As we tried the different toy shops in Philadelphia, the sales people only smiled indulgently and made us feel like Rip Van Winkle. “Around the turn of the century” they had sold the last hoop.

“Necessity is the mother of invention.” Martina, who had made the Advent wreath during our last Advents back home, decided to buy strong wire at a hardware store and braid it into a round hoop. Then she tied old newspaper around it, instead of hay, and went out to look for balsam twigs. We lived in Germantown, a suburb of Philadelphia. Martina looked at all the evergreens in our friends’ gardens, but there was no balsam fir. So she chose the next best and came home with a laundry basket full of twigs from a yew tree.

In the hardware store, where she had bought the wire, she also got four tall spikes, which she worked into her newspaper reel as candleholders, and in the five-and-ten next door she bought a few yards of strong red ribbon and four candles. The yew twigs made a somewhat feathery Advent wreath; but, said Martina, “It’s round and it’s made of evergreen, and that is all that is necessary.” And she was right.

An Advent wreath is round as a symbol of God’s mercy of which every season of Advent is a new reminder; and it has to be made of evergreens to symbolize God’s “everlastingness.”

This was the only Advent we celebrated at home because the manager who arranged the concerts for us had discovered that our tenth child would soon arrive and had canceled the concerts for the month of December. In the next few years a much smaller Advent wreath would be made by our children and fastened to the ceiling of the big blue bus in which we toured the country.

We always started out by looking for balsam fir, but not until years later, when we were to have our own farm in Vermont, would we have a balsam Advent wreath again. Meanwhile we had to take what we could find in the way of evergreens in Georgia it was holly; in Virginia, boxwood; in Florida, pine.

The least desirable of all was spruce, which we used the year we traveled through Wisconsin, because spruce loses its needles quickest. But as long as it was an evergreen….

In order to get ready for the celebration of the beginning of Advent, one more thing has to be added a tall, thick candle, the Advent candle, as a symbol of Him Whom we call “the Light of the World.” During these weeks of Advent it will be the only light for the family evening prayer. Its feeble light is the symbol and reminder of mankind’s state of spiritual darkness during Advent.

On the first of January a new calendar year begins. On the first Sunday of Advent the new year of the Church begins. Therefore, the Saturday preceding the first Advent Sunday has something of the character of a New Year’s Eve.

One of the old customs is to choose a patron saint for the new year of the Church. The family meets on Saturday evening, and with the help of the missal and a book called “The Martyrology,” which lists thousands of saints as they are celebrated throughout the year, they choose as many new saints as there are members of the household.

We always choose them according to a special theme. One year, for instance, we had all the different Church Fathers; another year we chose only martyrs; then again, only saints of the new world….During the war we chose one saint of every country at war.

The newly chosen names are handed over to the calligrapher of the family (first it was Johanna; after she married, Rosemary took over). She writes the names of the saints in gothic lettering on little cards. Then she writes the name of every member of the household on an individual card and hands the two sets over to the mother. Now everything is ready.

In the afternoon of the first Sunday of Advent, around vesper time, the whole family–and this always means “family” in the larger sense of the word, including all the members of the household–meets in the living room.

The Advent wreath hangs suspended from the ceiling on four red ribbons; the Advent candle stands in the middle of the table or on a little stand on the side. Solemnly the father lights one candle on the Advent wreath, and, for the first time, the big Advent candle. Then he reads the Gospel of the first Sunday of Advent. After this the special song of Advent is intoned for the first time, the ancient “Ye heavens, dew drop from above, and rain ye clouds the Just One….”

Consciously we should work toward restoring the true character of waiting and longing to these precious weeks before Christmas. Just before Midnight Mass, on December 24th, is the moment to sing for the first time “Silent Night, Holy Night,” for this is the song for this very night.

Advent Songs Sung by the Trapp Family:

YOU HEAVENS, DEW DROP FROM ABOVE

Text, Isaias 45,8; melody, first (Dorian) mode. This is the medieval Advent call–sing three times, each time a tone higher.

O COME, O COME, EMMANUEL

The text of this hymn is based on the seven Great Antiphons (O-Antiphons) which are said before and after the Magnificat at Vespers from December 17 to 23. The metrical Latin form dates from the early 18th century.

DROP YOUR DEW, YE CLOUDS OF HEAVEN

Text, Michael Denis, 1774; melody, 18th century Austrian, probably Michael Haydn, 1737-1806.

O SAVIOR, HEAVEN’S PORTAL REND

Text and melody, 17th century German. This forceful melody in the first (Dorian) mode should be sung in unison.

MARIA WALKS AMID THE THORN

German folksong known since the 16th century; probably much older. Translation, Henry S. Drinker.

BLESSED MOTHER OF THE SAVIOR

Text by Hermann the Cripple, 1013-1054, monk at Reichenau in the Lake of Constance. Melody in the fifth (Lydian) mode. This is the liturgical Antiphon in honor of the Blessed Virgin for the season of Advent and Christmas.

“Your joy in your children should outweigh by far any disadvantages they may cause. In them you will find your own happiness.” – Rev. George A. Kelly, The Catholic Family Handbook

MUSIC FOR ADVENT….

A beautiful Advent CD sung by a beautiful Benedictine Order of Nuns…Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles. Available here.

These graceful Religious necklaces can be worn every day as a reminder of your devotion to your heavenly patron. Get it blessed and you can use it also as a sacramental.

Available here.

Check out my Advent and Christmas Items here!

Love these books! What a great gift for someone!

For more than 50 years, the titles from the Confraternity of the Precious Blood have nourished the soul. Millions of readers have found in these treasured books a source of inspiration and grace.

Conveniently sized for pocket, palm, or purse, these little devotionals are treasures of wisdom and consolation. Available for the first time in a beautifully box packaged set, these are to be kept close at hand, to provide spiritual refreshment throughout the day and a gentle call to grow closer to God.

Available here.

My Confraternity Library includes:

• My Daily Bread – This is a series of short, daily reflections on the spiritual life. Written with loving care by Father Anthony Paone, this devotional will strengthen your love for Christ and his teachings. Written as a dialogue with Christ himself, it leads the reader through the three ways of the spiritual life: Purification, Imitation, and Union.
• My Daily Life – This is the follow-up title, and natural complement to My Daily Bread. While the latter focused on the interior life, My Daily Life focuses on the exterior life, offering practical advice to persevere in the holy resolutions which you make at the time of confession, Holy Communion, missions, retreats, or any moment of grace.
• My Meditation on the Gospel – This little book traces the events of Our Lord’s life through all four Gospels. This pocket daily devotional puts the reader in the footsteps of an early follower of Christ watching the events of the Gospel unfold.
• My Meditations on Saint Paul – Father James Sullivan begins each daily devotional with a scene from Acts of the Apostles or the Epistles of Saint Paul following in his missionary footsteps from Damascus to Rome.
• My Imitation of Christ ­- classic and treasured edition, aptly entitled My Imitation of Christ, is crafted specifically for the busy person in the modern world. It is an adapted illustrated work of The Imitation of Christ.
• My Way of Life – presents small, concise portions of the Aquinas’ Summa Theologica in a manageable format. This work will allow the reader to consider some of the highest thoughts of one of history’s greatest minds and apply them to the modern world.
• BONUS – My Daily Psalm Book – features a beautiful, solemn, but readable text, adorned with nearly 200 stirring illustrations by artist Ariel Agemian. It is a simple Divine Office for lay people to pray the Psalms assigned to each day of the week.

Available here.

This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for your support.