I'm sure I will think back to those days when my daughter and I made Advent wreaths, and later on the years when she and her older brother had homes of their own and their little brothers helped me make them.
In November of 1984 when we still had four children at home, I read an article in the December issue of Southern Living magazine about making Advent wreaths.
I simply had to recreate the lovely wreath with purple and white candles set in a bed of pink and purple heather.
That Friday after Thanksgiving Day, which I don't remember being called Black Friday yet, Christy and I drove to the florist with her little brothers. We entered the quaint cottage filled with themed Christmas trees and floral arrangements, scents of cinnamon potpourri in the air, Christmas carols playing.
I felt as much of a child as my two little boys, entranced by the room, but I had little coin of the realm to spend. We circled the display room in pure awe, watching carefully to be sure that three-year-old Defee didn't "flick" any of the ornaments.
You flick something when you use your thumb to launch your pointer finger at it, and Defee was an expert at this, something that strangers standing in department stores could have attested to. Christy and I had learned to be faster than his flicker. Zack walked a few feet in front of us, at the superior age of five trying to distance himself from such juvenile activity.
I asked a saleswoman if they sold heather, wondering if I would have enough money to buy it. We were taken to the walk-in cooler where we breathed in cold scents of lilies and roses and were shown two buckets on the floor that held heather, masses of gorgeous pink and purple heather.
When quoted a ridiculously low price per bunch, I said I would take one bunch of each color, guessing they would be skimpy and our first Advent wreath would be small. To my great joy, she wrapped up two fat bunches in green florist paper, enough for our wreath and several nosegays. Heather, it seemed, was a bargain among flowers. The florist foam I bought cost almost as much.
At a Hallmark store we found three pink tapers, one purple for Christmas Eve, and the fourth pure white for Christmas Day. We found ribbons in my sewing supplies and the container for our wreath in the garden shed, a large plastic saucer.
This picture is from years later, I'm not sure exactly what year because all of our Advent wreaths looked similar.
It's been many years since our children grew up and left home and our Advent devotions ended. I miss those years where we read scripture, sang carols and prayed together. I miss the years of reading Christmas books to them after the last prayer.
RH usually excused himself during story time, but the kids always lay on the floor looking up at the lights of our Christmas tree while I read to them. Some books, like Madeline L'Engles' The Twenty-Four Days Before Christmas, they wanted every year. Some were deemed boring and weren't repeated, such as A Child's Christmas in Wales. The boys howled with laughter but said, "Too weird!"
Those days of Advent wreaths and family devotions are over but there is still something in me that needs to mark each day of the Advent season.
I turn on the Christmas tree lights and take out Advent and Christmas: Wisdom from G.K. Chesterton, a book that a blog friend from Devon, England told me about.
Yesterday, Day 1 of Advent, there was a quote from Charles Dickens titled "The Gift of Hope" that I loved and will transfer to one of my many index quote cards.
It is currently said that hope goes with youth, and lends to youths its wings of a butterfly; but I fancy that hope is the last gift given to man, and the only gift not given to youth. Youth is pre-eminently the period in which a man can be lyric, fanatical, poetic; but youth is the period in which a man can be hopeless. The end of every episode is the end of the world. But the power of hoping through everything, the knowledge that the soul survives its adventures, that great inspiration comes to the middle-aged; God has kept that good wine until now. It is from the backs of the elderly gentlemen that the wings of the butterfly should burst.
Charles Dickens: Last of the Great Men
Hey, Mr. Dickens, I love what you wrote but what's with all the gentlemen? I think I feel butterfly wings behind me!
