h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

In Germany, you don't get Christmas without having four or five weeks of Advent first. The first Advent is on the fourth Sunday before Christmas day, so if Christmas day itself is on a Sunday like this year you have five weks of Advent (the first Advent Sunday was on 27th November this year).

With the beginning of Advent, the Christmas markets start - often on the Saturday before the first Advent. People put up an Advent Wreath which has four candles. A candle is lit for each Advent Sunday. There's a little rhyme going: Advent, Advent, a candle burns, then two, then three, then four, then the Christkind is at the door - and when the fifth candle burns you slept through Christmas.

Advent is the time to make Christmas Cookies A907535 (that entry got it wrong: the first December is NOT the first advent, unless it is a Sunday).
People start to make Christmas decorations (A900343) and home-made Christmas presents (A478127). On first December it is time to open the first door of your Advent Calendar (A15717323). I already mentioned that St Nikolaus comes on 6th December. In case you are interested, the poem we talked about in my last journal is in this week's (I translated it: A87728999).

Advwent or Vorweihnachtszeit (pre-Christmas time) as we call it, too, is meant to be a time of preparations for the big event, yet it is meant as a time to stop rushing around, pause, and give some thought to the world around you.

I loved Advent when I was a child: my grandma had decorated her flat with a red and golden star (similar to this one: http://i1130.photobucket.com/albums/m536/Belh2g2/DSC02131.jpg) only that hers was nicer.
She had some sort of Christmas pyramid - the principle was the same. That's where the similarity ended. It was this: http://files.tradoria.de/785d3e5ed980de620ace386919a5308c/images/491000591_569181.jpg and it made a pinging sound each time it hit the bells. She had these lanterns, too: http://www.peppiclip.de/BastelnLaternen/assets/images/Festliche_Laterne.jpg

It is very easy to make them yourself. These small things meant Christmas to me (not to mention the hot cocoa and Buttermandelspekulatius (http://www.worldofsweets.de/out/pictures/z1/800422g_p4.jpg) we got at my grandma's).

So you see, Advent here is a vital part of Christmas.

I'll tell more about it in a few days.

This is fascinating, Bel. I loved finding out about all that stuff

Jabs

Thank you, Jabs. I'm glad it is interesting.

Hi Bel the advent candles each have a link to one of the positive Christmas attributes of peace, love, joy and hope. The candles are purple, purple, pink, purple and if there is the fifth (Christ light) in the middle it is white. The pink candle is joy and on that Sunday in Advent the priest will wear rose coloured (pink) vestments in the Catholic church.

Thanks for that information, Vestboy. I never knew that! I've never seen an Advent wreath in such colours, either.
According to what I could find on the web, the Advent wreath was invented by a Protestant pastor who invented it in 1839 or something. It had a lot more candles, too: small candles for each weekday of Advent, four large candles for the Sundays. Somehow this spread to the homes fo Geman families, but with fewer candles (just the four). The Catholics only adapted it after 1925. Well, that's one explanation I found.