Lighting Christmas

Every family I suppose has a collection of holiday rituals that are reenacted every turn of the year in either the preparation for Christmas or in celebration of it. Our family was no different. Like everyone else in our neighborhood (other than the Shultzs and the Shulmans, who were Jewish), we put up a tree and decorated it and hung up our stockings with care (but on a cardboard fireplace as our home was heated by an oil burner). We hung lights up on the evergreens in our front yard and as I recall it we had a wooden Rudolf-head that we lit by spotlight that hung on the side of the house. But as far as I knew, we were the only family on our block that had an Advent candle. An Advent candle is a candle with numbers on the side of it running from number 1 at the top to number 24 at the bottom. Every night during the month of December the candle is lit to mark the passing of days leading up to Christmas. I believe it is a custom unique to those of German descent (and that we were on my mother’s side).

First story of December

In our home the candle, which usually stood at the center of our kitchen table, was lit every night of December and then usually my mother (as my dad was usually working) would gather my brother and I - and later, my sister – together either at the table or –sometimes – in our bedroom before we went to bed and read to us a Christmas story. Every December 1st, we were read C. Clement Moore’s ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas. Sometimes Dad was home and then he would read it and usually with a lot of panache and silliness. As the weeks passed leading up to December 25th we would hear stories of Christmas mice and other small critters, Frosty, Rudolf and the like. I remember one year my mom attempted to read all of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol but both my brother and I were too young to appreciate this wonderful Christmas classic. But on December 24th, when the once beautiful candle was reduced to nothing but a stub, it would be lit one final time. Before we trundled out the door heading down to Racine to spend the late afternoon and evening there with my mom’s side of the family, Dad would read the account of Jesus’ birth found in the second chapter of Luke. Only then could our Christmas celebration commence.

The last (and best) story of Christmas



As far as my family is concerned, must see TV
on Christmas Eve



When my own children were very young, my mom would ship us an advent candle to set on our table and light every night of December. We did not usually read by it (our family reading still is done in the morning before Emma heads off to school) but when it was lit it would immediately bring me back to the days of my boyhood when my mom would read to me. You don’t get many years to establish a tradition when you have small children in the house: just like our family did when I was a boy, we still celebrate St. Nick’s Day on Dec 6 (See So this is Christmas); I still hide Father Christmas (even though I often have to prod my children these days to look for him now); and following the Service of Lights on Christmas Eve we will drive the neighborhoods of Chetek viewing the lights and then return home and watch the Hanna-Barbera’s version of The Nativity (Trivia: Helen Hunt is the voice of the Virgin Mary; here’s hoping the video tape lasts one more Christmas!) But sometime in the last six or seven years the Advent candle stopped being a part of the annual Christmas care package that Grandma Martin is still faithful to send to our kids (the company she always bought them from went out of business). Now I wouldn’t be surprised if I mentioned it missing they would look at me quizzically and say, “Advent what?”

I read to other small children these days – the kids of Roselawn Elementary here in Chetek – and when I read this morning to Mrs. Bowers’ kindergarten class from Greg Hildebrandt’s A Christmas Treasury (which contains wonderfully illustrated copies of both ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas and The Nativity of Jesus) it will be my way of relighting that Advent candle that once burned every night in my boyhood home on Meadow Place. And by doing so I breathe in the aroma of Christmases past and all those yet to come.