What is an Advent Wreath?
An Advent Devotional Custom of Waiting, Light, and Hope
For many Christians, one of the most familiar signs that Advent has begun is a circle of evergreen holding four candles, with another candle lit as each Sunday brings Christmas nearer. In many churches and homes, a white candle stands in the center waiting to be lit when Christmas finally arrives.
The Advent wreath has become so familiar that it can seem much older than it actually is. It is not an ancient rite inherited from the early Church, nor is it prescribed by the Book of Common Prayer. Yet its comparatively recent origin does not make it insignificant. Received and used wisely, the wreath can become a simple and effective Christian devotion, marking sacred time, teaching patient expectation, gathering households for prayer, and directing our attention toward Jesus Christ.
That proper relationship matters. The BCP orders Advent; the wreath serves Advent. The wreath is most useful when it remains a servant of the Church’s season rather than a substitute for it.
Where the Advent Wreath Came From
The history of the Advent wreath is unusually well documented. Johann Hinrich Wichern (YOH-hahn HIN-rikh VIKH-ern), a German Lutheran pastor and pioneer in Christian social ministry, founded the Rauhes Haus in Hamburg as a home and educational community for children in difficult circumstances. In 1839, Wichern placed a large candle arrangement in the prayer hall so that the children could see the days of Advent passing as they waited for Christmas.
Wichern’s original arrangement did not look exactly like the wreath most Christians know today. It carried a candle for each day from the First Sunday of Advent until Christmas Eve, with larger white candles for the Sundays and smaller red candles for the weekdays. Because the number of days from the First Sunday of Advent to Christmas Eve changes from year to year, the total number of candles changed with it. Das Rauhe Haus continues to preserve this older Wichern form today.
The familiar arrangement of four candles, one for each Sunday of Advent, represents a later simplification and development of the custom rather than Wichern’s exact design. That historical distinction does not diminish the wreath. Wichern was trying to help children experience the passage of Advent concretely, one day and one light at a time, and that catechetical instinct remains one of the wreath’s greatest strengths.
From its northern European Protestant setting, the practice became increasingly widespread and was eventually received into Anglican devotional life as well. There was no single identifiable moment when Anglicanism officially adopted the Advent wreath. Rather, as with many worthy devotional customs, Christians received it, adapted it, and found that it could serve the Church’s already-existing observance of Advent.
That distinction between the season and the custom is important. Advent belongs to the Church’s liturgical inheritance; the wreath is a later devotional practice used within it.
The Wreath and the Book of Common Prayer
The Book of Common Prayer 2019 does not prescribe an Advent wreath. It does not mandate candle colors, assign the candles the names Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love, require a rose candle on the Third Sunday, provide a wreath-lighting rite, or direct that a white Christ candle be placed in the center.
That does not mean Anglicans should regard the wreath with suspicion. The Prayer Book itself distinguishes the Church’s regular authorized liturgies from supplementary devotions, and it allows Scripture-based devotions and other services consistent with Holy Scripture under proper ecclesiastical authority. A worthy devotional practice does not need to appear in the Prayer Book in order to be useful, but neither should it compete with the worship the Prayer Book actually orders.
The BCP already gives Advent its structure. Its calendar tells us when the season begins and ends. Its Collects teach the Church how to pray through the four Sundays. Its lectionary gives us the Scriptures by which Advent is interpreted. Its Daily Office forms the Church in sustained watchfulness, while the liturgical life of the season leads us from the coming King, through prophetic preparation and John the Baptist, toward the mystery of the Incarnation.
The wreath can help us inhabit that structure, but it does not create it. The BCP orders Advent; the wreath serves Advent.
Four Sundays, Four Candles
The familiar contemporary Advent wreath has four principal candles, corresponding to the four Sundays of the season. In many churches and homes, one additional candle is lit each week so that the growing light visibly marks the approach of Christmas.
A common devotional pattern names the candles Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love. These themes are worth retaining because they are easy to remember, useful for children, and deeply Christian when they remain rooted in Jesus Christ. They are not, however, official Prayer Book names for the four Sundays, nor are they the only candle themes used among Anglicans. Some congregations use different thematic schemes, while others simply allow the candles to mark the Sundays without assigning each one a separate title.
The First Sunday of Advent is therefore not “Hope Sunday” because a candle scheme has declared it so. Its character comes from the Church’s appointed prayer and Scripture, and the same is true for the Sundays that follow. Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love can be useful devotional lenses, but they should not replace the richer biblical proclamation the lectionary gives us.
Used properly, each theme points beyond itself toward Christ. Christian hope is not optimism about circumstances but confidence in the Lord who has come and will come again. Christian peace is not merely tranquility but reconciliation with God through Jesus Christ and the promised peace of his Kingdom. Christian joy is not seasonal cheerfulness but joy in the Savior whose coming is good news. Christian love is not an abstract feeling but is revealed in the God who loved us and sent his Son for our salvation.
The wreath should therefore culminate not in four seasonal virtues but in Jesus Christ, the one who gives those virtues their Christian meaning.
Purple, Blue, and Rose
Candle colors also vary. A widely familiar pattern uses three purple candles and one rose candle, while other Anglican churches use blue during Advent, and some use four candles of the same color. None of these arrangements should be presented as though the BCP mandates a single Anglican scheme.
Purple has a longstanding place in Western Advent observance and has often been associated devotionally with the season’s royal, preparatory, and penitential character. Blue has also become familiar in parts of Anglicanism. The precise choice matters less than allowing the colors to serve the season rather than dominate it.
The rose candle deserves some additional explanation because two related customs are sometimes treated as though they shared the same historical origin. The Third Sunday of Advent has long been associated in the Western tradition with Gaudete (gow-DEH-teh), the Latin command to “rejoice.” The use of rose-colored vestments or other rose accents on that Sunday belongs to an older liturgical tradition, while the later Advent-wreath custom incorporated that existing association by giving the Third Sunday a rose candle.
The rose candle did not create Gaudete Sunday. Rather, the developing wreath tradition borrowed an already established liturgical association. A rose candle can therefore beautifully signal the joy that breaks through Advent’s restraint as Christmas approaches, even though neither the rose candle nor the title Gaudete is mandated by the BCP 2019.
The Christ Candle
Many Advent wreaths include a fifth candle, usually white, placed at the center and lit on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. It is commonly called the Christ candle.
This candle was not part of Wichern’s original arrangement but belongs to the later development of the wreath tradition. It is nevertheless a useful addition because it gives the custom an unmistakably Christological center. Hope points to Christ, peace comes through Christ, joy is joy in Christ, and love is known most fully in Christ. When the white candle is lit at Christmas, the devotion reaches the one toward whom the entire season has been moving.
Jesus is not merely one more theme added after Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love. He is the one who gives those words their Christian content. The Christ candle therefore guards the wreath against becoming a generic exercise in winter optimism. Advent is not ultimately about becoming more hopeful, peaceful, joyful, or loving by contemplating those ideas. It is about the coming of the Lord.
The Gospel says, “The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world” (John 1:9). The candles are signs, but Christ is the Light.
Evergreen and the Circle
Christians commonly find devotional meaning in the evergreen wreath itself. Because evergreen retains its color through winter, it can suggest enduring life, God’s faithfulness, and the life that does not perish in Christ. The circular form, with no obvious beginning or end, can likewise suggest eternity and the everlasting life promised in him.
These interpretations are appropriate Christian symbolism, but they should not be mistaken for the historical origin of the Advent wreath. Wichern’s arrangement arose as a practical way to mark the days of waiting, while the evergreen form and the meanings associated with it developed within the later history of the custom.
Historical honesty and received symbolism need not compete. The sacramental signs instituted by Christ, particularly the water of Baptism and the bread and wine of Holy Communion, have a theological status that is not shared by later devotional objects. Yet the Church has also made faithful use of created things such as oil, ashes, palms, candles, and evergreens to support prayer, teaching, remembrance, and the keeping of sacred time.
The important question is whether the symbolism tells the truth. Evergreen can remind us of life in Christ, the circle can call eternity to mind, and candlelight can direct us toward the Light who shines in the darkness. Those meanings are worth preserving precisely because they point beyond the objects themselves.
Light Increasing in the Darkness
The Advent wreath’s strongest visual lesson may also be its simplest. The season begins with a single flame, and another candle is added each week until four lights burn as Christmas approaches. The room grows brighter as the Church moves closer to the celebration of Christ’s birth.
Christians should nevertheless be careful about what that increasing light means. It is not a picture of humanity gradually improving itself until darkness is finally conquered by accumulated human goodness, nor does Advent proclaim that we save ourselves one candle at a time. The direction of salvation is the opposite: we wait for the Light who comes to us.
Saint John writes of Christ, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5). Advent gives the Church permission to acknowledge the darkness because Christians already know that darkness does not have the final word. The wreath therefore turns increasing light into an enacted confession of hope. The promise draws nearer, the King is coming, and the salvation for which creation longs does not arise from within the darkness but enters it.
That makes the Advent wreath particularly fitting in homes where December is not easy. For someone grieving, lonely, frightened, sick, disappointed, or exhausted, the wreath need not demand artificial cheerfulness. A candle burning in a darkened room can proclaim something gentler and stronger: the darkness is real, but it is not ultimate, because Christ comes.
An Anglican Household Devotion
The wreath may be especially valuable in the home. The BCP 2019 provides Family Prayer in simple forms appropriate for Christian households, including families with children. Its pattern is deliberately uncomplicated, drawing households into Scripture, prayer, the Lord’s Prayer, and suitable Collects. The Prayer Book also allows the Collect of the Day and other seasonal material to be used in family devotion.
An Advent wreath can fit naturally alongside that pattern without pretending to be a Prayer Book rite. A household does not need an elaborate ceremony. Family members can light the appropriate candle or candles, read a short passage of Scripture, pray the Collect of the Day or another suitable prayer, offer brief intercessions for the Church, the world, neighbors, family members, and those in need, and conclude with the Lord’s Prayer.
Families with children may allow a child to light the candle, read a verse, or lead one of the prayers. The repetition itself becomes catechesis. Week by week another candle is lit, Christmas comes nearer, and the family hears again that Christians are people who wait for Jesus.
The BCP even encourages explicitly Advent-shaped household devotion by suggesting use of the Advent antiphons and the corresponding verses of O Come, O Come, Emmanuel in the days before Christmas. The wreath can accompany that Prayer Book pattern without competing with it. There is no need to invent an “official Anglican Advent wreath liturgy,” because the purpose is not to create a second liturgical system in the home but to help the household pray within the season the Church has already given.
The Wreath in Church
The same principle applies in parish worship. An Advent wreath can provide a beautiful visual marker of the season. Children notice it, visitors recognize that something is changing week by week, and its increasing light can reinforce the Church’s expectation of Christ.
The wreath must nevertheless remain subordinate to the liturgy. The Sunday should not become primarily “the Sunday when we light the Peace candle,” because the appointed Collect and Scriptures say more than any candle label can say. Nor should a wreath-lighting ceremony become so elaborate that it competes with the proclamation of Holy Scripture, the prayers of the Church, the preaching of the Gospel, or the Holy Eucharist.
Devotional customs can enrich the Church when they remain servants of the Church’s worship. The Advent wreath is at its best when it helps the congregation see and inhabit Advent more clearly without becoming the interpretive center of the season.
A Later Custom Can Still Be a Good Custom
Christians sometimes discover that a beloved custom is newer than they assumed and respond as though something valuable has therefore been lost. That conclusion does not follow. The Advent wreath does not become meaningless because its recognizable history begins in the nineteenth century rather than in Christian antiquity.
Christian tradition did not stop developing once the early centuries ended. The Church has continued to receive hymns, prayers, music, art, devotional practices, and customs that teach the faith and help Christians live it. The proper question is therefore not merely how old a custom is, but what it teaches and whether it teaches truthfully.
Wichern’s original practice taught children to wait for Christmas, and the modern wreath continues to do that in a simpler form. The evergreen can speak of enduring life, the candles can make waiting visible, and their growing light can teach expectation. The familiar themes of Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love can direct reflection toward the gifts found in Christ, while the central candle can name explicitly the one toward whom the whole devotion moves.
None of these features needs to be apostolic in origin to be pastorally fruitful. Historical honesty protects tradition from false claims, but it need not strip tradition of meaning.
Conclusion
The Advent wreath is therefore neither essential to Advent nor trivial. A parish without one lacks nothing necessary for keeping the season faithfully, and a household that never lights one can still pray the Daily Office, hear Holy Scripture, pray the Collects, prepare through repentance, sing the hymns of Advent, and await the coming Lord. Where the wreath is used, however, it can serve those practices beautifully.
Its circle can remind us that the God who made us is faithful, its evergreen can speak of life that endures, and its candles can mark the passage of sacred time. Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love can point beyond themselves toward Jesus. The rose candle can echo the Church’s summons to rejoice, and the Christ candle can make visible what the whole devotion has been awaiting.
Most importantly, the growing light can proclaim the Gospel without pretending that we created that light ourselves. We do not light our way into salvation; the Light comes to us. The wreath does not establish the season, name its Sundays, replace the lectionary, or create another liturgy. The Prayer Book gives us Advent through Scripture, prayer, calendar, and worship, while the wreath helps us see, remember, and inhabit what the Church is already proclaiming.
The BCP orders Advent; the wreath serves Advent. When it serves Advent well, every candle points beyond itself to the one for whom the Church waits: Jesus Christ, the Light of the world, who came among us in humility, who reigns even now, and who will come again in glory.