hooray for more Christmas traditions!

Sometimes all you need is to be rescued from yourself.

This weekend could have gone really badly for me.

Instead, I have amazing friends. Tonight was one of those nights where I wasn't really feeling up to being social, I just wanted to be alone. but obviously God had other plans, because I'm currently sitting in Jess' apartment at 6:08 a.m. after having only gone home for a few minutes to grab my stuff and leave again. Granted, I didn't get any of my own studying done, but that doesn't matter. I think tonight was one of those nights where I probably shouldn't have been alone. It's like, sometimes, when all you want to do is be by yourself that's the last thing that should happen. It's hard to explain. Tonight was fun, in a random sort of way. I should probably study. And I will. Just not right now. Right now I'm going to blog about nothing. Well actually, I'm going to write about another Christmas tradition, because It's technically Sunday, and today is the second Advent.

So, like I said before, my dad is German. Hence, we have a lot of German Christmas traditions. Although, I don't really know if Advent is particularly German, I'm gonna pretend it is until someone proves me wrong. Advent is the waiting period before Christ's birth. It's celebrated the four Sundays before Christmas eve. We have an advent wreath, with four taper candles, and a pillar candle in the middle. On the first Sunday we light the first candle, and on the second Sunday the second candle, and so on and so forth. On Christmas Eve we light the pillar candle in the middle of the wreath. Before my brother moved out, Advent was a whole production. My brother, sister, and I would go into a bedroom and shut the door. We would read the story of Christ's birth, and talk about it until it was time to come out. We always knew when it was time to come out because that's when we would hear the music start. When we came out of the room, our parents would have turned on all the Christmas lights, and lit all the angel chime-things (I'll try to describe those later and find out what they're called) and we would each have a tray with little candies and perhaps a small gift. On the first Advent, it was only candy. Which was fine with us. On the second Advent, a small unwrapped gift. Third Advent was a larger unwrapped gift, and by Fourth Advent there would most likely be gifts under the tree, and we would be allowed to choose one (although sometimes they were chosen for us.) Afterwards, we would all sit around and discuss the story we had read. I think it was something tat made me appreciate Christmas even more, and it's definitely a tradition that I'll carry on with my own family.