As I work my way through the liturgical calendar this year, I hope to chronicle as much as I can about how I’m celebrating each season. Read Advent Week 1 here and Weeks 2 & 3 here.
Advent Week 4
Week 4 of Advent this year was the second-shortest it could possibly be. With Christmas Day falling on a Tuesday, that made our fourth week of Advent only two days long.
With a theme of LOVE, our Sunday morning church service featured the songs Light of the Stable, O Come All Ye Faithful, Imagine, Come Thou Long-Expected Jesus, Once in Royal David’s City, and Love Has Come.
Because we hosted my dad and stepmom for dinner the night before, we completed our tree on Saturday morning. All we needed was a beautiful star (I got mine from Trades of Hope, but it looks like it’s no longer available) and a tree skirt. But… I didn’t have a tree skirt. And I didn’t want to just buy one from the grocery store. Maybe someday I’ll make one, but for now we just put a blanket under the tree.
I also switched out the Mary figure in our Advent wreath, since it was basically Christmas… Next year I want to do something different one of the weeks of Advent, saving baby Jesus for Christmas Eve or Day.
We only lit the candle of love once this year — on Sunday night. Monday night was our church’s Christmas Eve service, so we left the house at 6:00pm after a rushed dinner, and when we returned at 9:00pm it was past bedtime for the girls.
I loved our Christmas Eve service this year. Sometimes, when you’re so heavily involved in the planning of church services, you lose some of the “surprise” and “magic” of experiencing it all in real-time. But we changed things up this year, starting our service with darkness and candlelight instead of ending that way, and it was beautiful.
Christmas
The Twelve Days of Christmas actually starts on Christmas Day and goes through January 5 (the day before Epiphany). It’s meant to be a time of feasting and celebrating! There is so much opportunity for games and puzzles and baking and hosting, especially since my kids and my husband have two weeks off from school.
This year we celebrated Christmastide in a unique way… Our extended family had been planning a big trip for the past year… to spend a week in the Caribbean.
So after opening our gifts on Christmas morning, we packed our bags in the afternoon and left for my in-law’s house. Two days later, 10 adults and 7 kids had our toes in the sand. Please don’t be jealous. 😉
At first I thought I’d “missed out” on celebrating Christmastide in the traditional sense. We weren’t at home, enjoying our new toys and sipping hot cocoa while putting puzzles together and reading by the light of the Christmas tree. We weren’t baking and frosting Christmas cookies and watching all of our favorite Christmas movies.
But the more I think about it, the more I realize we really did celebrate. We saw beautiful things in creation, we sipped coffee and pina coladas by the water (or in the air conditioning). We cooked meals for each other, and we played games together EVERY night.
Are there some things I’m looking forward to next Christmas? Yup. I’ve heard a lot about Twelfth Night and King Cakes and Epiphany, all of which we were actually home for, but busy doing laundry and prepping for back-to-school instead (and honestly not wanting to be around people anymore #introverts). Maybe next year…
I’m finally taking down Christmas decorations and hopefully our tree in the next day or so. And it’s actually making me sad. Because we were able to draw out Advent and Christmas this year, I didn’t feel like I was sick of it all by the time Christmas Day came around. I’d say that makes the beginning of my liturgical calendar experiment a success!
It’s time to look ahead on the calendar, and see what things we will celebrate next. Lent doesn’t begin until March, but I’m excited to learn about some other “holidays” coming soon.
How was your Christmas? Are you sad to pack things up or were you ready for it on December 26? 🙂
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