Friday Five: Adventually

RevGalBlogPals offers this meme for the day:

Although it comes as late as it can this year, Advent is upon us. Some of us grew up observing it, while to others (including this childhood Baptist) it was even more foreign than Lent! Over the past twenty years, I have grown to love Advent as a season of preparation, although as a pastor I find it harder to practice it at home than at church, even when the church might prefer I make it the other way 'round.Here are five questions about Advent for this first of December:

1) Do you observe Advent in your church?
I'm leading worship at the hospital this Sunday, and I had to explain what Advent is to a couple of people, but yes we will be at least lighting the candles on a wreath for the Sunday services.

My home church celebrates with liturgy and a wreath. One year my family lit the candles. manBoy had just turned two. Having practiced blowing out his birthday candles, he was well prepared to try to blow out each candle as Gifted & Talented lit it. Fortunately his breath wasn't quite strong enough. manBoy still likes to be the one who extinguishes the candles after the service.

2) How about at home?
We usually wait to start Christmas preparation in our home until after the one or two birthdays that fall after the beginning of advent. That way each person gets their own day separate from Christmas.

3) Do you have a favorite Advent text or hymn? Star-Child #2095 in The Faith We Sing.

4) Why is one of the candles in the Advent wreath pink? Just heard this explanation yesterday, "Because the priests got tired of wearing purple vestments."

5) What's the funniest/kitschiest Advent calendar you've ever seen? When I was a little girl, my grandmother made each of us girls a banner calendar that had 12 pockets on the top and 12 on the bottom. In the middle was a felt Christmas tree decorated with covered sequins. Each pocket held a tiny little trinket with a thread for hanging it on the sequins on the tree. The objects didn't really go with Christmas or Advent. I often wondered where she found all of them. She worked at a "Five and Dime" so I'm sure that was the source. The objects changed order each year so it was still fun to see what would come next. The last pocket always held a tiny little nativity scene. Do you remember those? We used to get them in Sunday school. I still have the banner calendar, but the trinkets are long gone.