Festivals as a Celebration of a Christian Event

Festivals as a Celebration of a Christian Event

Festivals are a celebration of a Christian event. The are seven main

festivals these are: Advent, Christmas, the Epiphany, Ash Wednesday,

Lent, Easter, Ascension Thursday and Pentecost Sunday.

Advent is the first and most important in the church’s year. Advent is

a period of four weeks that some Christians use as a countdown to

Christmas. Advent is really a time of preparing for the coming of

Christ. To celebrate Advent we have Advent customs. One of these

customs is the Advent Wreath and this is probably the most important

custom. On the Advent Wreath there are five candles. These candles are

lit every Sunday in Church until the last Advent candle is lit on

Christmas Day. Also a small prayer may be said before the candles are

lit. One candle is purple and it represents the Saints. The next

Candle is pink and is lit to symbolise the joy of the third Sunday of

Advent that is meant to remind people that their preparation may be

hard but it is a feast of joy. The White Candle symbolises the birth

of Jesus. The wreath also has other symbols including the circle of

Evergreen that suggests the eternal life of God. The Holly represents

the crown of thorns that Jesus wore when he was crucified and the

Berries on the Holly represent the blood that Jesus was to shed for us

at the end of his life.

The next Advent Custom I’m going to explain is the Advent Calendar.

This is a twenty- four or twenty-five day calendar of which you open

the doors of the days and normally there is a picture which has

nothing to do with Christmas but pictures of animals or cartoons

which helps you countdown to Christmas. Every day there should be

something new behind the doors. These days companies like Mars and

Cadbury’s put chocolate behind the door.

Another Advent Custom is the Jesse Tree. This shows the ancestry of

Jesus Christ as a tree with all the famous ancestors of Jesus going