A longstanding custom at Chapel Hill Presbyterian Church is the Advent wreath. While these decorations are certainly festive and add to the holiday spirit, there is also much symbolism in the wreath that people may not recognize.
First, the wreath is always in the form of a circle. Since a circle has no beginning and no end, it is a symbol for God, Who is eternal and without beginning or end.
The Advent wreath is always made from evergreens. These branches, as the name indicates, are "ever green" -- ever alive. They are symbolic of Christ, Who died, but Who is alive, never to die again. The evergreen branches also symbolize our soul's immortality. Christ came into the world to give us never-ending life. Entwined around the circle of evergreens are red holly berries. They look like large red drops of blood, and symbolize the blood shed by Christ for mankind. They remind us that Christ came into this world to die for us and redeem us. It is through the shedding of His blood that we have eternal life.
The wreath has four candles, three violet ones and one rose colored candle. These symbolize the four weeks of the Advent season, our time of preparation for Christmas. Each day, the Liturgy tells us of the Hebrew expectation of the Messiah in the Old Testament reading, and the Gospels begin to introduce us to the characters of the Christmas story. At the beginning of Advent a single candle is lit, but each week another candle is lit. As the light from the wreath increases each week as more candles are lit, the wreath reminds us that the birth of the Light of the World is coming closer. So may our souls grow brighter in their love for, and anticipation of, the Christ Child as this season of grace continues.
The color of the four candles also has significance. The violet candles have a penitential appearance, much as we find violet in the church during the penitential season of Lent. The violet is to remind us that Advent is a season of preparation in which we should be spiritually preparing our souls to receive Christ on Christmas. The purple candles represent "penance, sorrow and longing." The single rose colored candle is lit on the third Sunday of Advent, which is called "Gaudete" Sunday. "Gaudete" is the Latin word for "rejoice", and symbolizes an element of rejoicing in the midst of our penitential preparation, for the joy of Christmas is almost here. The rose color is made by mixing violet with white. It is almost as if the joy we celebrate at Christmas (symbolized by bright white) cannot contain itself during this penitential season (violet) and burst forth a bit into the Advent season. On Christmas, the four candles are replaced with white ones -- our time of preparation is over and we enter a time of great joy.
Many people have wondered, where did the Advent Wreath come from? As Christianity grew throughout Europe many local customs were adapted with a Christian message. One of these customs is the Advent Wreath. This custom can be traced back to Scandinavia or Germany where sun worshipping pagan tribes used a wreath to appease their "hidden" god during the darkest of the winter days. They would take a cart wheel, wound with greens and decorated with lights, string them up in the halls of the tribes of northern Europe and whirl them on Winter Solstice. The pagans in essence would "sacrifice" the use of a cart wheel and ponder the blessings of light and life and implored the sun god to return to them.
Supposedly it was Boniface who first took these wreaths and created the Advent wreath. The Christians were preparing for their own feast of light and life: the Nativity of the Savior. They found this wheel or wreath an appropriate means to help ponder the coming of Lord during the Advent season. They added one light for each of the four Sundays in Advent while thinking about the darkness without God after the Fall of man. Each light represented a growing hope for salvation enkindled in paradise and nourished through the ages by the prophets up to John. John was the Precursor of Christ, and was the Morning Star who announced the coming of the Sun at day break. The Virgin Mary was the dawn of a new day bringing daylight into the world, she bore a son, Jesus, who is the new light and life of the world.
The wreath has no beginning nor end and symbolizes eternity; the greens in the wreath symbolize life and growth; the four candles, preferably of beeswax and blessed and set aside since Candlemas, represent the ages "sitting in darkness and the shadow of death." Each candle, colored the same as the priests vestments for the week, progressively adds more light until Christmas, when the lights from the wreath set off a blaze of light on the "tree of life," the Christmas tree, for the time is fulfilled. The Advent Wreath has grown as a custom and is accepted by both, Catholic and Protestant Christians.
Through the years, we have used several sequences of readings for Advent, these are a few possiblities: