What Is Advent? A Guide to Celebrating Christ's Coming

Most of the people who ask me about Advent aren't really asking about candles or calendars. They're asking because December has arrived again and they're exhausted, or grieving, or dreading a family gathering that will cost them something. If that's you, hear this first: Advent was never built for people who already feel hopeful, loving, joyful, and at peace. It was built for people still in the dark, waiting for a light that hasn't fully come.

Why this is genuinely hard

Advent asks you to slow down in the one month of the year built to speed you up, school events, deadlines before the year closes, gift budgets, family logistics, and into the middle of that, the church calendar asks for fifteen quiet minutes and a candle. That collision alone is why most people who intend to observe Advent give up by the second week. There's a harder problem underneath it. The four themes, hope, love, joy, peace, can feel like an accusation if your year has held none of them. Nobody tells you Advent was shaped by generations who were also waiting through exile, famine, and grief. It was never meant to describe how you feel. It's a declaration about who God is, made especially for people who currently have reason to doubt it. And there's real theological tension too, not just emotional difficulty: Advent holds together 'Christ has come' and 'we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells' (2 Peter 3:13, NIV), Christ has not yet finished what he came to do. Christians disagree how much weight to give each half. I lean toward keeping both fully in view.

while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ (Titus 2:13, NIV)

1. Name one real thing you are waiting for

Many people light the first Advent candle and say the word 'Hope' without attaching it to anything real. Before you light anything tonight, write one sentence: what are you actually waiting on God for? A marriage that's barely holding. A diagnosis you're afraid of. A child who hasn't come home. An end to loneliness that doesn't just get managed. Let that be what the candle stands for, not a theme borrowed from a devotional, but your actual life brought into the light. This isn't about manufacturing a feeling. The people first praying for a Messiah weren't waiting abstractly either; they were waiting under occupation, for a specific deliverance. Advent works the same way now. Say the thing. Then light the candle for it.

I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, and in his word I put my hope. (Psalm 130:5, NIV)

2. Read the nativity in order, in small pieces, over four weeks

Fifteen minutes, once a day, is enough. Week 1: Luke 1:26-38, the angel and Mary. Week 2: Luke 1:39-56, Mary and Elizabeth, the Magnificat. Week 3: Matthew 1:18-25, Joseph deciding not to shame her. Week 4: Luke 2:1-20, the birth, the shepherds. Read slowly and notice something you've skipped before, Zechariah struck silent for doubting, Joseph's fear, shepherds being the first people trusted with the news, not priests or kings. These aren't background details. They're the story God actually told, before it became a pageant.

But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. (Luke 2:19, NIV)

3. Do one concrete act of mercy each week

James 1:27 gets quoted at Advent more than it gets acted on. Pick one act per week and put it in your calendar the way you'd schedule a work meeting, or December will swallow it: visit someone who'll be alone at Christmas, give directly to a food bank rather than tinned goods you don't want, write to someone you're estranged from, sit with someone in hospital or a care home. Small and specific beats vague and generous-sounding every time.

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. (James 1:27, NIV)

4. Keep a one-line waiting journal, every night

Nothing elaborate, one line: what you're still waiting for, and where you saw God's faithfulness that day, or didn't. Some nights the second line will stay blank. Write that too. Habakkuk took up a post on the ramparts and waited to see what God would say, complaint included in the record. This is a record for you, not a performance for anyone else to read.

I will stand at my watch and station myself on the ramparts; I will look to see what he will say to me, and what answer I am to give to this complaint. (Habakkuk 2:1, NIV)

5. Choose one thing in your December to cut, not add

Advent's slowness loses to the retail calendar every time unless you remove something rather than stack Advent on top of an already full month. Skip one party. Cap gifts at three per person. Let someone else host this year. Say no to one obligation you only said yes to out of guilt last year. This isn't about becoming a Scrooge, it's about making fifteen minutes exist somewhere that didn't exist yesterday.

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens. (Ecclesiastes 3:1, NIV)

6. Bring one other person into it with you

Advent kept entirely alone tends to fade by the second week. Ask a spouse, housemate, or friend, even by phone, to light a candle with you once a week, or read one passage together. You don't need a congregation that formally observes Advent to do this in twos. The loneliest Decembers are the ones where nobody else knows what you're carrying. This is a small, low-cost way to not carry it entirely alone.

And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching. (Hebrews 10:24-25, NIV)

When it stops working

The four themes, hope, love, joy, peace, feel like lies given what this year has actually been.
The candles are declarations about who God is, not weather reports on your emotional state. You're allowed to light the 'Joy' candle with tears on your face, the ancient prayers of the church were written by people in exile and under occupation, doing exactly that. Naming the gap between what you feel and what you're declaring isn't hypocrisy. It's closer to what faith usually is on a Tuesday.

My church doesn't observe Advent, it feels like something I shouldn't touch.
Advent predates the Reformation split by roughly a thousand years and is kept by Lutheran, Anglican, Presbyterian, and Methodist churches, not only Catholic ones. It doesn't ask you to affirm anything beyond what every Christian creed already holds, that Christ came, and Christ is coming again. You can observe it at your own kitchen table even if your congregation never mentions it.

I'll turn this into another performance to get right, like everything else in December.
Then do the smallest version: one candle, one line in a journal, nothing photographed or shared. Advent has no minimum aesthetic requirement. The point is attention, not execution, and a thin, honest practice beats an elaborate one you abandon by December 10th.

December is already too full; I can't add a single thing.
Then don't add first, subtract. Pick one thing to remove from your month before you pick one practice from this list to keep. Advent was never meant to be six new obligations stacked on the ones you already have.

Your first week

Sunday: Light one candle. Say aloud, even quietly, what you're actually waiting for this year. Monday: Read Luke 1:26-38. Fifteen minutes, nothing else required. Tuesday: Write one line, what you're waiting for, where you saw God today, or didn't. Wednesday: Text or call one person who'll be alone this Christmas. Thursday: Cross one obligation off your December list for good. Friday: Read Isaiah 9:6 aloud, slowly, twice. Saturday: Ask one person to light next Sunday's candle with you.

Questions people ask

Is Advent actually commanded in the Bible?

No, you won't find 'observe Advent' as an instruction in Scripture. It developed later, likely from fourth- and fifth-century practices in Gaul and Spain preparing new believers for baptism, which merged over time with preparing for Christmas in Rome by around the sixth century. What is biblical is the posture underneath it: waiting on God's promises, a thread running from the exile prophets through Simeon and Anna in Luke 2. Advent is a human tradition built to practice a biblical habit.

Do I need a wreath and candles to do this properly?

No. The objects are aids, not requirements, useful because they mark time physically in a way a phone reminder doesn't. But every step in this guide works with nothing more than a Bible and a notebook. Don't let the absence of a wreath talk you out of starting tonight.

What's the actual difference between Advent and Christmas?

Advent is the season of waiting, traditionally the four Sundays before December 25. Christmas, in the church calendar, doesn't end on the 25th, it begins there and runs twelve days to Epiphany on January 6. Most of us live by the opposite rhythm, building toward the 25th and being done with it the next day. Observing Advent is partly a decision to run against that current on purpose.

Can I observe Advent while grieving, or does that clash with the 'joy' theme?

Yes, and that may be closer to what Advent was originally for. Many traditions kept the season with a penitential tone: purple, fasting, quiet, because waiting includes grief, not just anticipation. If the grief is heavy, sit with a pastor or counselor alongside these practices; Advent isn't a substitute for grief support, only a frame that can hold ache and hope together without forcing you to choose.

If you want to go further

The Advent of the Savior: Meditations on the Coming of Christ by Sinclair Ferguson

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