A Brief History of Advent
So, what is this thing called Advent someone might ask you. It isn’t just the shopping season between Thanksgiving and Christmas, though your neighbors or coworkers might possibly think that.
In the first few centuries of Christianity, the early Church started a season of fasting and prayer called St. Martin’s Lent, beginning with what we know as Armistice Day, November 11th, which was the feast day of St. Martin. It continued until Christmas Eve, for the early Church *did* celebrate Christmas on December 25th. The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius invented the Feast of Sol Invictus to try to compete with Christmas. You might have heard that story the other way around, but historical study shows us that Christmas came first.
St. Martin’s Lent was a six-week season. This “little lent” still shows up in the repentance and end-times oriented lectionary readings in traditional churches, such as Lutherans. After some time, St. Martin’s Lent became replaced with Advent in the western church, and looked forward to Christ’s second coming and back to His first coming.
In England, the Christian New Year’s Eve - the night before the first Sunday of Advent, is called “hanging of the greens” and the parish would gather to decorate the church building with evergreen and holly, sing carols and consume Christmas goodies, kicking off looking forward to, remembering Christ’s birth.
Among the Greek Orthodox, the Lenten aspect of Advent still remains somewhat (especially for those who still celebrate Christmas on the old December 25th, which in our calendar is now January 6th), but in the West, especially during the past thousand years, Advent became more and more about Jesus’ birth, especially after the dying down of the millennialist fervors around A. D. 1300-1350, when lots of people thought that the world was about to end.
I found an excellent web site that is so good about Advent,l that I would be plagiarizing to say much more. I will give you the link, and I highly recommend you read it. It not only gives you the meaning and history of Advent, but also explains the Advent candles, the Jesse Tree and has some neat traditions that you might even want to try out.