Advent
How did the Advent calendar and the Advent star come about? When do people start putting up Christmas decorations? The celebration of festivals and folk traditions amongst the people of the Nordic societies is one of the Nordic Museum’s areas of expertise. Here you can find out more about Advent based on the museum’s collections and expertise.
The origins and meaning of Advent
Advent is a Christian season celebrated during the four Sundays before Christmas Eve and marks the beginning of the Christian church year. The word Advent comes from the Latin word for “arrival” and refers to the coming of Jesus Christ.
For many people today, Advent marks the beginning of Christmas preparations, with Advent stars, candle holders, Christmas baking, mulled wine and Advent calendars for children. However, Christmas celebrations and decorations have changed over time. Just over a hundred years ago, Christmas shop displays usually began only on the Sunday before Christmas Eve.
In early Christian Sweden and the Nordic countries, Advent was a period of fasting, a way of physically marking the joyful arrival of the Lord. During the fast, people ate more sparingly, especially avoiding meat. In the farming society, Advent was known as the Christmas fast (julfasta), when preparations for Christmas food began. Those who could afford it slaughtered the Christmas pig at the beginning of December.
A reminder of the Christmas fast is lutfisk (dried cod prepared with lye), which was traditionally soaked on St Anna’s Day on 9 December. Advent was also a time of stillness and reverence, when weddings were forbidden and noisy work was to be avoided.
Advent traditions and decorations
Both the Advent candle holder and the Advent star have German origins and became common in Sweden during the 1930s. The Advent star was created in the German town of Herrnhut in the 1880s and became popular in Sweden during the 1930s and 1940s.
Students and teachers in a school in Herrnhut created paper stars illuminated from within. One possible inspiration was the Swedish tradition of star boys (stjärngossar) carrying stars in processions. When German businesses began producing the stars, they were mass-produced in foldable forms and later became electrified.
The first Swedish written record of the term adventsstjärna dates from 1923, and sales began a few years later. The star is said to symbolise the Star of Bethlehem, which guided the three wise men to the stable where the newborn Jesus lay in the manger. Today, the Advent star remains an important Christmas symbol.
The Advent calendar
The first Advent calendar was printed in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. In the late 19th century, a young boy named Gerhard Lang lived in Germany. His longing for Christmas was so strong that his mother baked twenty-four biscuits and placed them on a piece of colourful cardboard. Each day until Christmas, Gerhard was allowed to eat one biscuit.
As an adult, he transformed his mother’s biscuit calendar into a printed paper calendar with two sheets and 24 Christmas images. The success was unexpectedly great, and in the 1920s a new version was created with doors to open and an image behind each one. Lang’s calendar became popular and eventually reached Sweden.
