Four Candles, Twenty-Six Days: Advent as a Countdown We Keep Together

Somewhere around late November, a small thing happens in a lot of homes. Someone clears a space on the table, sets out a ring of greenery with four candles in it, and lights one. The next Sunday, two. Then three. By the fourth, the table is bright and Christmas is a few days off.

That is Advent: a countdown you can see. It is one of the few rituals of waiting that whole households, schools and churches still keep at the same pace, one candle or one paper door at a time. This year it starts on Sunday, November 29.

Advent is the season of preparation before Christmas in Western Christian churches. Encyclopaedia Britannica dates the beginning of the season to the Sunday nearest November 30, St. Andrew’s Day. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) puts it the same way: Advent begins with evening prayer of “the Sunday that falls on or closest to November 30.”

In 2026, that Sunday is November 29. The four Sundays of Advent are November 29 and December 6, 13 and 20, and the season ends on December 24. That makes this year’s Advent 26 days long. Because the start moves with the calendar, the season can be as short as 22 days or as long as 28, depending on which day of the week Christmas falls.

The season is old. Britannica says the date it was first observed is uncertain, but notes that Bishop Perpetuus of Tours, who led that church from 461 to 490, set a fast before Christmas starting on November 11, St. Martin’s Day, and that the Council of Tours in 567 mentioned an Advent season. Catholic churches traditionally use violet during Advent, and many Protestant churches use blue or purple.

The Advent wreath has a known address. It began at the Rauhes Haus in Hamburg-Horn, a home for children and young people in need founded by the theologian Johann Hinrich Wichern, who was born in Hamburg in 1808. The German Christmas Museum describes the Rauhes Haus as an institution of the Protestant Inner Mission for orphaned and neglected boys. The home opened in 1833 in a farmhouse.

Wichern gave the children a way to count the days. The German Christmas Museum says he had arranged by 1838 that a candle was lit after the daily reading. In 1839, according to Hamburg’s tourism office and the Protestant news site evangelisch.de, a wooden wreath about the size of a wagon wheel hung in the prayer room, with small red candles for the weekdays and white candles for the Sundays. The number of red candles changed each year, from 18 to 24, depending on when the first Sunday of Advent fell. From 1860 the wreath was dressed with fir branches and white ribbons.

The version most homes use today kept only the four Sunday candles. Methodist writers describe it as a German and Scandinavian home devotion, a candle for each past week and the current one, lit at dinner or evening prayer. Congregations in parts of Europe and America started using Advent wreaths on Sundays in the late 19th century.

It depends on who you ask, and that’s worth knowing before anyone at your table insists there is only one right answer. Customs vary by church, by country and by family.

• Violet and rose. The USCCB describes the Catholic custom: ideally three purple candles and one rose candle, with the rose lit on the third Sunday, Gaudete Sunday, which marks the midpoint of Advent. The purple stands for prayer, penance and sacrifice. White candles can also be used.

• Blue or purple. Britannica notes that many Protestant denominations use blue or purple for the season. Methodist guidance says wreath candles usually match the church’s seasonal colors, and church suppliers often sell a rose or pink candle for the third Sunday.

• Hope, love, joy, peace. Many people know the four candles by these themes. United Methodist writers point out that they came from church supply houses, based on mid-20th-century readings, and were assigned in that order: hope, love, joy, peace. Many congregations now choose their own themes from the readings each week.

• Red and white. Wichern’s original wreath used red candles for ordinary days and white for Sundays.

Under every version is the same simple rule: light one more each week. Methodist writers say the original home practice was about marking time and the growing light. The USCCB puts it in terms of hope and expectation building as each candle is lit.

The wreath is one way to count. People have invented many others, and several start at different points in the calendar.

**Germany: the Advent calendar.** NPR’s history of the Advent calendar says 19th-century German Protestants marked the days before Christmas with chalk marks on doors and walls, by lighting candles, or by adding a straw to a Nativity crib each day. A handmade wooden calendar survives from 1851. Gerhard Lang, credited as the inventor of the printed Advent calendar, produced the first commercial one in the early 1900s with the illustrator Ernst Kepler, and introduced calendars with little doors in the 1920s. Chocolate calendars reportedly first appeared in the 1950s.

**Sweden: Lucia, December 13.** On the morning of December 13, Swedes celebrate Lucia. A figure in white wears a crown of candles, leading attendants, star boys and gingerbread men in song. Visit Sweden notes that December 13 was the shortest day of the year in the old Julian calendar, and that S-shaped saffron buns called lussekatter are served with gingerbread and coffee or glögg. Sweden’s Nordic Museum dates the oldest known white-clad Lucia visit to 1764 and says the celebrations became widespread across Sweden in the 1950s. In 2026, Lucia falls on Gaudete Sunday.

**The Philippines: Simbang Gabi, December 16 to 24.** Filipino Catholics keep nine Masses at night or before dawn, starting December 16. The last, on Christmas Eve, is called Misa de Gallo, the Rooster’s Mass. The Philippine Star traces the custom to 1669, early in Spanish rule, when Masses were held before dawn so farmers could attend before working in the heat. Afterward, people often share puto bumbong, purple rice cakes steamed in bamboo tubes, and bibingka, rice cakes charred top and bottom, with tsokolate or salabat.

**Orthodox churches: the Nativity Fast, 40 days.** Eastern Orthodox Christians prepare with a 40-day fast from November 15 to December 24, a time of prayer, fasting and giving to others. Churches that follow the older Julian calendar keep the same fast from November 28 to January 6 on the everyday calendar and celebrate Christmas on January 7.

Yes. Many people already do. Advent began as a church season, and for many families the candles and readings are still prayer. But the countdown itself, a shared way of marking time, has spread well beyond church. NPR’s reporting lists Advent calendars filled with wine, makeup, jam, cheese, coffee, pet treats and toys.

Plenty of the world’s rituals do the same job: they help people wait together. Whether it’s a calendar on the fridge or a candle at Sunday dinner, the countdown gives a household a shared clock. Everyone knows which door is next and who gets to open it, and a week has a shape: the candle gets lit, someone puts the kettle on, someone reads or tells a story.

If you aren’t religious, you can keep the structure and choose your own meanings. Some households give each week a theme. Others link each candle to a person or place they miss. Some just use the candles as a reason to sit down together once a week in a month that tends to scatter everyone. If you share Advent with people of faith, ask what the candles mean to them and follow their lead at their table.

**Start a four-Sunday candle table with the people close to you.** You don’t need a perfect wreath. You need four candles, a fireproof plate, and a regular time.

1. Set it up before November 29. Four candles on a plate or board, with some greenery if you like. Choose your colors: violet and rose, blue, red and white, or whatever you have. Put them somewhere everyone passes.

2. Pick one time and keep it. Sunday dinner, Sunday breakfast, or a video call with family in another time zone. The ritual works because it repeats.

3. Light one more each week. Week one, one candle. Week four, all four. Let a different person light it each time. Children usually want this job.

4. Give each week a small question. For example: what are you waiting for, who do you want to see this winter, what went well this year, what are you looking forward to. Go around the table once. Keep it short.

5. Add a daily door if you want more. An Advent calendar from December 1 to 24 gives the days in between something to do. A homemade one of 24 envelopes, each with a note, a task or a name to call, works as well as a store-bought one.

6. Never leave flames alone. Put candles out before anyone leaves the room. Battery candles work well for small children, and in Sweden, battery candles have replaced real ones in Lucia crowns for safety.

By December 20, four candles will be burning on your table, and you’ll have kept four Sundays together. That is a lot to have done in one season.

01Ritual OS

Find a practice,keep it with your people.

Ritual OS matches you with short practices from the world's traditions, each one named with the tradition it comes from and where it began. It adapts them week by week, for you alone or with the people close to you. Try a four-Sunday Advent candle table this year, or another seasonal countdown, at a pace you'll keep.

Practices from the world's traditions · week by week

Four Sundays, four candles

02Kithmark

Who is at your tablethis December?

Kithmark gives each person in your life their own page. The People map shows where everyone is and their local time, so you know when it's a good hour to call your sister for the Sunday candle lighting. It keeps a private record, in plain words, of how things stand with each person, never scores, encrypted on your phone.

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Ritual OS can suggest a countdown practice like the four-Sunday candle table, name the tradition it comes from, and adapt it week by week for you alone or for your household. Kithmark helps you remember who belongs at the table: each person has their own page, the People map shows their local time so a long-distance candle lighting lands at a good hour, and your notes stay private, in plain words, on your phone.