BRIAN PILKINGTON

R.E. A01 Coursework

Festivals

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.

Join now!

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 back as far as Jesse , the father of King David. Some churches do this with a service of the Hanging of the greens. Others use a tree, either at home or in a sanctuary, as a Jesse tree. This is a tree or a large banner with a symbolic tree that is decorated each week usually by the children with ornaments or objects that represent Old Testament events from creation to the birth of ...

This is a preview of the whole essay