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Advent Calendar & Chain Pairings

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I know there are wine pairings for just about every food on the planet. But here are some resources for word pairings to go along with the Advent Calendar Templates or the Advent Chains from my November 9 and November 25 blog posts

1) #AdventWord is is a global, online Advent calendar. Each day from the first Sunday of Advent through Christmas Day, #AdventWord offers meditations and images to inspire and connect individuals and a worldwide community of believers to the themes of Advent. AdventWord is a ministry of Virginia Theological Seminary.” 

I love using the words from #AdventWord because I know that people all around the word are praying and pondering them too. You can post your reflections, images, poems, prayers…every day and see how others are responding. Below are the 2019 words. You can sign up to receive a daily reflection at adventword.org

#AdventWord 2019

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2) This year along with #AdventWord,  I’m using a reader called Low: An Honest Advent Devotional by John Pavlovitz. I have not read the whole book yet, but I like what I have sampled, especially this paragraph in the introduction about Advent: “the invitation is not to escape this place to an elevated heavenly sanctuary somewhere; it it to bring heaven down. Immanuel means ‘God with us.’ In other words, it is Jesus getting low. This is really good news for us here on the ground.”

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3) There are many wonderful daily readers for Advent. Here are five of my all time favorites–and there are many others. I would use these over and over again. I will include just the title and author. You can click on the title for further information. They are linked to the Kindle editions if they exist but hard copies are also available.



  • Light Upon Light compiled by Sarah Arthur–wise and literary excerpts from stories, poems, essays, and books.

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4) Here is a review I wrote in 2017 of four other books for Advent.

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5) If you are looking for playful and prayerful ways to celebrate Advent you can also get my book The Season of the Nativity: Confessions and Practices of an Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany Extremist by Sybil MacBeth. I have tried just about everything I suggest.

I am an Advent freak/geek and proud of it. I think Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany are the underrated, most important seasons of the Church Year. They prepare and equip us to live the rest of the year as embodied disciples of Jesus.

 

Gratitude Gobblers 2019

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“For the Beauty of the Earth, Sing, Oh Sing Today
Of the Skies and of our birth, Sing, Oh Sing, always.
Nature, Human and Divine, all around us lies,
Lord of All to Thee we raise grateful hymns of praise.”

These simple and beautiful words are from the “Canticle of Brother Sun” from the Missa Gaia by Jim Scott and Paul Winter (Litchfield, CT, Living Music Records, 1982). This is one of my favorite thanksgiving songs.

Here are three turkey templates to use for a Thanksgiving gratitude exercise. This can be a fun, family activity between dinner and dessert on Thanksgiving Day. In the center of the turkey write your name for God: “Loving God, Gracious God, Holy One….” In the spaces within the turkey and on the sides of the page, write your “gratitude list.” The list does not have to include sweeping, important things like “family, country, home, teachers…”–though it can. Just go for the little, ordinary things that pop into your head.–“gravy, pumpkin pie, colorful leaves on the ground, a game of checkers with my brother…” Part of the purpose of a gratitude list is to learn to “think in gratitude” in the same way we “think in French or Spanish” when we learn a foreign language. 

If this gratitude gobbler is a little too goofy for you, trace around your hand to make your own template. Draw lines or arcs to delineate spaces for words.  

Click on the link of the template you want. Download it first. Then print. Feel free to make multiple copies.

Left  .pdf or jpg 
Middle   .PDF  or .JPG 
Right  pdf.   OR    .jpg

Below are examples of completed turkey from previous years.

A Blessed Thanksgiving to all.


Advent Paper Chains

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Advent paper chains are like 3-D Advent calendars. They are a physical and visual way to mark the daily journey to Christmas.

Paper chains are an easy and playful way for kids to learn Advent words. Pick simple words like “wait, prepare, watch, baby, dark….” For children who are too young to read, write the word on one strip of paper and talk with them about its meaning. Let them doodle or draw around the word and along the strip. When the artwork is finished, take the strip of paper, make a loop, and staple the ends together. Give children two other strips of paper on which to draw and color. Remind them of the word without necessarily writing it again. Add the finished strips to each side of the original loop to create a three-loop chain. If you decorate a Christmas tree right after Thanksgiving, you can hang the trio on the tree. (Or maybe forget the Christmas decorations completely until closer to the 25th.)  Repeat the process every day of Advent with a new word. Reviewing the previous words each day immerses children in the rich vocabulary of the season.

Adults can also create Advent chains. Try any of the ideas I suggest for Advent calendars in my November 9th blog post. I like to pick an Advent word for each day and pray it/meditate on it as I doodle. The word seems to stay with me for the rest of the day. Adults might enjoy the meaty and fresh daily Advent vocabulary offered by #AdventWord.

Keep the 3-loop chains separate as individual “ornaments” or connect them together in one long, swoopy chain. It’s amazing to me how the simple practice can end up being both beautiful and spiritually satisfying.

Since I often travel at Christmas time, I buy a little Norfolk Island pine and designate it as an Advent tree. Purple or blue lights on it remind me that it is still Advent and not yet Christmas.

2019 Advent Calendars

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My early-childhood, next-door neighbor always had an Advent calendar. In our Christian Science household we did not celebrate Advent, but I coveted all those little doors my friend Marian opened every day in the weeks before Christmas. Each door revealed tiny, colorful scenes of sheep, shepherds, stars, and angels. The pictures summarized the stories I knew from The Bible and from Christmas carols. I think an occasional Santa Claus and reindeer popped out of doors, too.

Advent is now my favorite season of the Church year and using an Advent calendar is my favorite way to pay attention to the four weeks before Christmas. The calendars I use, however, are different from the store-bought versions. Mine have no doors, just a calendar template with blank spaces for the days of Advent. Each day I fill one of the little spaces with my prayers–not just verbal prayers but visual ones. The calendar grows day by day with doodles, drawings, and words–whatever feels right. After four weeks the page is a patchwork quilt of my small, daily efforts to be present with God. This practice feels prayerful and playful.

I posted the first Advent templates in 2009. I still love using the calendars because they engage my mind and my body in the Advent experience. The daily practice of drawing on the calendar gives me a creative and simple way to immerse myself in the story of God’s Incarnation and to watch and wait for the celebration of the birth of Jesus on December 25. The accumulation of my daily doodlings is a colorful tapestry and a record of my spiritual journey for the weeks leading up to Christmas. Below are samples from past years, a list of ways to use this year’s calendar templates, and eight possible templates.

Finished Calendars from Previous Years

Creating an Advent calendar is not supposed to produce a great work of art. Enjoy the process. Drawing skills are not a requirement! Advent calendars can also be just black and white.

Calendars by Cindy O
Candles by Connie Denninger

The free, downloadable calendar templates below provide spaces for your daily prayers, words, and doodles. Since Advent starts on December 1st this year, each calendar has twenty-four empty spaces. These Advent calendars are for both adults and children.

Ways to Use the Calendar Templates

1) In a space or shape on the calendar, write the name of someone for whom you are praying. Doodle around the name, add color. Think of each stroke of color or each doodled mark (line, dot, arc, spiral…) as a wordless prayer. If words come to you as you draw and color, pray them. Squeeze them onto the calendar in the shape or along the margins if they feel important. When you have finished with your daily entry, say “Amen” or recite a short passage of Scripture appropriate to Advent like “The Lord is my light and my salvation.” (Psalm 27:1) This tiny colorful mosaic creates a frame around the person’s name. Every time I look at the calendar, the names and designs are a visual reminder to pray for each person again.

2) Combine your calendar with one of the many wonderful Advent books of meditations and reflections. Read the entry for the day. Choose a word from the reading that jumps out at you. Write it in the shape and start to doodle and color around it. Marinate in the word. What is the word saying to you? What does God have to say to you about the word?
Listening + doodling+ coloring = praying.  Keep a computer or notebook next to your calendar so you can write any insights or “ahas.”

3) Write and ponder an Advent word: prepare, wait, pregnant, hope, watch, darkness, wilderness, longing, light… as you doodle and color.

#AdventWord, a ministry of Virginia Theological Seminary, offers a new word each day and the chance to see how others throughout the world have reflected on the word. 

4) Advent is a season of hope. Write something you hope for each day. Offer that idea to God as you draw, write, and color.

5) Celebrate the Women and Men of the Bible. Choose a different person for each day and learn what they did and why they are important to our story and God’s story. As you draw, be quiet and listen to what these people might reveal to you.

6) Advent means “coming,” and specifically the coming of Jesus. Write one of the many names for Jesus in the daily box. Here are a few of the many ways we refer to Jesus: savior, messiah, friend, Prince of Jesus, Emmanuel…. Use the Bible, Handel’s Messiah, Christmas carols, and hymns to uncover those names. Pray and ponder how that name for Jesus stirs, affects, annoys, delights, or inspires you.

7) Choose a word from the daily lectionary readings for the season. Here is a link to the Vanderbilt University site for the daily readings.

7) For smaller children, print the calendar on 11″x17″ paper and just let them color. Light a battery-powered votive candle and give them a quiet, secret place to work. The Advent Tree template might be a simple one for a child to use.

2019 Advent Calendar Templates in .pdf  form.

Click on the links below the pictures for the one you want. When the image appears as a  google doc, click on the download button at the top (the square with the downward facing arrow). Download first; then print. Feel free to share the calendar templates with others, for individual or group use.

Thanks to Cindy O for creating the Box Calendar template for 2019.

Notes:

  • Advent is short this year. It starts on Dec 1 and lasts 24 days.
  • Each calendar has a space for Christmas. On the Advent Tree Calendar it is the star. The Angel Calendar has the face of the angel.The Box Calendar has the central oval. The Star Calendar has the large Star of David in the center.
  • I like to enlarge the 8.5″x11″ format to 11″x17″ card stock. It gives me more room to doodle and color and consequently more time and space with the person or word.
  • Thanks to Cindy O. for the 2019 Box Calendar template.

P.S. If you have trouble downloading the template, send me an email from the Contact page and I’ll send a calendar template to you directly. Sometimes school and church computers or accounts will not allow you to download things from unknown sites on the internet. If you contact me, use your home email instead of a school or church email. If you would prefer a .jpg, contact me.