How to Keep Advent 2026: A Guide for Individuals and Groups

Advent is the season of waiting and preparation that opens the church year, beginning on the fourth Sunday before Christmas. In 2026, Advent begins on Sunday 29 November and ends on Christmas Eve, Thursday 24 December. The word comes from the Latin adventus, “coming”. Advent looks two ways at once: back to Christ’s first coming at Bethlehem, and forward to his coming again in glory.

That double focus is what makes Advent more than a countdown to Christmas. Its readings are full of prophets, warnings to stay awake and promises of a world put right. It is a hopeful season, but a sober one.

Advent 2026 dates

• First Sunday of Advent: 29 November 2026
• Second Sunday of Advent: 6 December 2026
• Third Sunday of Advent (Gaudete Sunday): 13 December 2026
• Fourth Sunday of Advent: 20 December 2026
• The O Antiphons: 17 to 23 December 2026
• Christmas Eve: Thursday 24 December 2026
• Christmas Day: Friday 25 December 2026

These are the dates of the Western calendar, kept by Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist, Reformed and many other churches. The Orthodox Church keeps a longer Nativity Fast of forty days from 15 November, and churches that follow the Julian calendar keep Christmas on 7 January. For the rest of the year, see the church year guide.

The themes of Advent

Each Sunday’s readings move the season along. The first Sunday looks to the end of all things: “Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming” (Matthew 24:42). The second and third bring John the Baptist, calling people to “prepare the way of the Lord” (Mark 1:3, quoting Isaiah 40:3). The fourth turns to Mary and Joseph and the promise about to be fulfilled.

The prophet Isaiah runs through the whole season: the people who walked in darkness seeing a great light (Isaiah 9:2), the shoot from the stump of Jesse (Isaiah 11:1), the cry “Comfort, O comfort my people” (Isaiah 40:1). Four words are often used to sum up Advent: hope, peace, joy and love. Older traditions speak of watching, repentance and expectation.

Advent is sometimes called a little Lent, and its traditional colour is purple, though many churches now use blue to mark it as a season of hope rather than penitence. The third Sunday is Gaudete Sunday, from the opening word of its old introit: “Rejoice in the Lord always” (Philippians 4:4). In many churches the colour lightens to rose for the day.

The Advent wreath

The Advent wreath is a ring of evergreens with four candles, one lit on each Sunday of Advent, and often a fifth white candle in the centre for Christmas Day. The custom is usually traced to Johann Hinrich Wichern, a Lutheran pastor in Hamburg, who in 1839 hung candles on a cartwheel so the children in his care could count the days to Christmas. It spread through German Lutheran homes and churches and is now kept across traditions.

Commonly three candles are purple (or blue) and one is rose, lit on the third Sunday. The candles are given different names in different places. Many use hope, peace, joy and love. The Church of England’s Common Worship suggests the patriarchs, the prophets, John the Baptist and the Virgin Mary.

A simple wreath prayer at home

Light the candles for the week at an evening meal. Read a short passage (the Sunday’s Old Testament reading or a few verses of Isaiah), say a prayer such as the collect for the week, and sit for a moment in the light before eating. Five minutes is enough. Children usually love to take turns lighting and snuffing the candles.

The O Antiphons: 17 to 23 December

In the last week of Advent the church’s Evening Prayer gains seven short prayers, the O Antiphons, sung before and after the Magnificat. Each calls on Christ by a title drawn from the Old Testament and ends with a plea to come:

• 17 December, O Sapientia: O Wisdom
• 18 December, O Adonai: O Lord of Israel, who appeared to Moses in the burning bush (Exodus 3:2)
• 19 December, O Radix Jesse: O Root of Jesse (Isaiah 11:10)
• 20 December, O Clavis David: O Key of David (Isaiah 22:22)
• 21 December, O Oriens: O Morning Star, or Dayspring (Malachi 4:2)
• 22 December, O Rex Gentium: O King of the Nations
• 23 December, O Emmanuel: O God with us (Isaiah 7:14)

The antiphons are at least as old as the eighth century. Read backwards, the first letters of the Latin titles spell ero cras, “tomorrow I will be there”, an answer that arrives on Christmas Eve. The hymn “O come, O come, Emmanuel”, translated by John Mason Neale in the nineteenth century, is a paraphrase of them. (In the calendar of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, O Sapientia is marked a day earlier, on 16 December.)

You do not need to sing Vespers to use them. Read one antiphon each evening, with the scripture it echoes, and pray it in your own words.

How to keep Advent: simple practices

• Pray morning or evening prayer. Advent is a good season to begin the Daily Office. Its readings carry the season’s themes day by day.
• Read Isaiah or Luke. A chapter of Isaiah a day, or Luke 1 and 2 slowly over the four weeks. Try lectio divina with the songs of Mary (Luke 1:46-55) and Zechariah (Luke 1:68-79).
• Keep a little quiet. December is loud. Choose one small absence: no phone at breakfast, the radio off in the car, an evening without screens each week.
• Wait to celebrate. Some households hold back the tree or the carols until close to Christmas, then keep the twelve days of Christmas fully, to the Epiphany on 6 January.
• Give with attention. The prophets’ hope is for justice and the poor. Many people give to a food bank or shelter, or spend time with someone who will be alone at Christmas.
• Pray a breath prayer while you wait. “Come, Lord Jesus” (Revelation 22:20) suits a breath prayer in the supermarket queue.

Keeping Advent with a small group

Advent is a natural time for a group to begin something, because it is the start of the church year. A few friends, a home group or a family can agree a short Advent rule: one daily reading, a few honest lines in response, a weekly meeting around a wreath, and perhaps the O Antiphons together on the last evenings.

Keep it modest. Four weeks in December is not the time for an ambitious programme, and the point is to make room, not to fill it. Agree at the start how you will look back at the end, and whether you will carry anything into Christmas and the new year. If the group wants to keep going, Advent is a good time to write a fuller rule of life together.

How Ordo helps

Ordo is an iPhone app for keeping a rule of life with a few people, and it follows the Western church year. In Advent the app’s photographs, prompts and readings turn to the season. Each day asks three small things: a written reflection, a response to the day’s scripture and a short check-in, about ten minutes in all. No one sees anyone else’s words until everyone in the group has written, and then they are revealed together.

When Advent closes, each person receives a formation letter drawn from their reflections over the season. There are no streaks or badges, so a missed day in a busy December is simply a missed day. Ordo is in beta on iPhone; join the waitlist to keep Advent with a few others.