Advent (First Sunday of Advent) Countdown

The First Sunday of Advent — the fourth Sunday before Christmas, falling between November 27 and December 3 — opens the Advent season of hopeful waiting and marks the beginning of the Western Christian year, when the first candle on the Advent wreath is lit.

History

The word Advent comes from the Latin adventus, meaning 'coming' or 'arrival'. The earliest traces of a preparatory season before Christmas appear in fourth- and fifth-century Gaul and Spain, where Christians kept weeks of prayer and fasting in the run-up to Epiphany, when baptisms were often celebrated. The Council of Tours in 567 refers to December observances kept by monks, and by the time of Pope Gregory the Great around the year 600 the Roman church had given the season a recognisable shape: a sequence of Sundays of preparation leading to the Nativity. The Western church eventually settled on four Sundays, with the season opening on the Sunday nearest November 30, the feast of Saint Andrew — which is why the First Sunday of Advent can fall anywhere from November 27 to December 3. Because it begins the cycle of readings and feasts that runs through the whole year, Advent Sunday came to be regarded as the start of the Western liturgical year, a kind of church New Year's Day. Medieval congregations marked the day with the great Advent hymns and chants, including the ancient longing of 'O come, O come, Emmanuel'. The domestic customs now inseparable from the season are more recent. In 1839 Johann Hinrich Wichern, working with children in Hamburg, built the first Advent wreath — a ring of greenery with candles lit week by week to count down the Sundays. Printed Advent calendars followed in early twentieth-century Germany, popularised by the publisher Gerhard Lang around 1908, and in many European cities the opening of Christmas markets is timed to the first Advent weekend. Carried by migration and shared tradition, wreath, calendar and candlelight have made Advent Sunday the quiet, glowing threshold of the Christmas season around the world.

Meaning

For Christians, Advent is a season of expectant waiting and preparation: it looks back to the birth of Jesus at Bethlehem and forward in hope, holding both memory and anticipation in the four weeks before Christmas. Lighting the first candle on Advent Sunday — often called the candle of hope — begins that journey, and because the day opens the liturgical year it carries the freshness of a new beginning for churches across many traditions. Beyond formal worship, the First Sunday of Advent has become the gentle starting gun of the festive season. Families open the first door of the Advent calendar, wreaths appear on tables and doors, and towns switch on their lights and markets. In a hurried time of year, the day stands for patience, warmth and the pleasure of looking forward — the idea that the waiting itself is part of the celebration.