What Advent is
Advent — from the Latin adventus, ‘coming’ — is the season that opens the Church’s year and prepares for the coming of Christ. It looks two ways at once: back to the first coming of the Lord at Bethlehem, and forward to his return in glory at the end of time. It is therefore a season of hope and of vigilance, kept in a spirit of quiet restraint.
Its colour is violet, the colour of preparation and penance, which may be softened on the third Sunday — Gaudete Sunday, ‘Rejoice’ — to rose, as the Church’s joy begins to break through. The four Sundays of Advent are marked by the lighting of the Advent wreath, one candle each Sunday, the light growing as Christmas nears.
The chant of Advent
The great song of Advent is Rorate Cæli — ‘Drop down dew, ye heavens, and let the clouds rain down the Just One’ — the cry of a waiting world, sung in the candle-lit Rorate Masses before dawn. Alongside it, some also sing the penitential Attende Domine, more properly a chant of Lent, as a plea for mercy.
In the last days before Christmas, from the 17th to the 23rd of December, the Church sings the seven O Antiphons — ‘O Sapientia,’ ‘O Adonai,’ ‘O Radix Jesse’ — each naming Christ by a title from the Old Testament, the source of the beloved hymn O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.
How to keep it
Keep Advent quietly. Let the season be genuinely one of waiting rather than premature celebration: the Advent wreath, the O Antiphons in the final week, and a little more silence than usual are its native customs. The restraint is the point — it makes the joy of Christmas real when it comes.
When it falls
The dates shift each year with the day of the week on which Christmas falls.
Last reviewed for accuracy on , against the Douay-Rheims Bible and the Church's own documents.