Advent
Date: 31 November
2014 – 24 December 2014
Gift: Advent
Calendar
Price: R70 – R170,
depending on whether or not Lindt made the chocolate in your advent calendar
Food: HotButtered Rum and the chocolate from your advent calendar
Saint: Andrew the
Apostle
Scripture: John 1
(you can get a free copy of the English Standard Version Bible on Kindle)
Activity: Preparation
A large part of the excitement of Christmas is the preparation
time leading up to it. Putting up and
decorating of the tree, baking cookies and fruit cakes, singing carols and shopping
for gifts in the festively decorated stores. Retailers are particularly fond of promoting
certain gifts as appropriate for each of the Twelve Days of Christmas. All of this leads up to the wonderful day
filled with strewn wrapping paper and stuffed stomachs… and then it’s all over.
The thing is though, we’ve somehow been selling Christmas
short. I’m not even talking about the excessive eating and drinking and
spending. But we’ve literally been missing out on a whole whack of Christmas
when someone decided to make the 25th of December the Twelfth Day of
Christmas instead of the First Day of Christmas it really is. You see, the real Twelve Days of Christmas
start with the birth of Christ and ends when the wise men (the Bible never
mentions three, it only mentions three gifts) visited Him, also called the “Epiphany”.
Add to that the month of Advent leading
up to the 25th and Christmas really does become the “Festive Season”.
Advent starts on the fourth Sunday before Christmas,
referred to as Advent Sunday. It’s the one closest to the feast day of St. Andrew on 30 November
and is a period of preparation for the three comings. That’s the coming of Jesus
to the world in the form of a baby; His coming to each Christian at the time
they accept Him as Saviour; and the final coming again to earth to take His
followers to heaven with Him.
St Andrew, was originally
a follower of John the Baptist (you know, Jesus’ cousin who kicked his mother in the womb, foretold Jesus’ coming, ate locusts, baptised people and then end lost his head on a silver platter). Andrew became Jesus’ first apostle when John said
the following of Jesus:
Andrew was finally tortured and crucified on an X-shaped
cross for his faith, which many will now be familiar with as St Andrew’s cross.
Advent is also a period of fasting before the great Midnight
Feast originally had by Catholics after Midnight Mass Service on the 24th
of December. We’re not Catholic though, so instead we prepare for the great Christmas
lunch one chocolate at a time in the form of an advent calendar. This is something
I’ve added to the gifts I’m giving my true love over the Twelve Days of
Christmas and added to my own
In addition I’ve started a little Christmas preparation
tradition of my own. On Adven
In the spirit of preparation, and because of the massively
popular demand for my Pumpkin Casserole recipe before Christmas day, I’ve posted all the recipes paired with the Twelve Plus One Tiger Christmas Tales ahead of time so you can include them in your own Christmas
preparations if you’d like.
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