"Say what you want about the Christians, but they can write a tune."

"it’s beautiful isn’t it?  Say what you want about the Christians, but they can write a tune."

     Mrs. Reed of "In the bleak mid-winter," Black doves, Episode 6 ("In the bleak midwinter"), c. 29:45 (23:10 to go).

The history of the Advent wreath

1914:  The earliest occurrence of the exact phrase advent wreath in the Hathi Trust Digital Library as of 30 Dec 2024:  Margarethe Müller (1862- ), Elsbeth: a story of German home life (New York:  E.P. Dutton & Company, 1914), 214.  Naturally, others follow.  Here there are clearly more than four candles, but in this report on p. 276 of vol. 23 (no. 1 (March 4 1921)) of The Quaker:  a fortnightly journal devoted to the Religious Society of Friends there are only three.  Etc.

1918:  The earliest recoverable hit on Adventkranz (specifically) in the Hathi Trust Digital Library as of 30 December 2024:  Ernst Mummenhoff, "Das Findel- und Weisenhaus zu Nürnberg, -orts, kultur-, und wirtschaftsgeschichtlich II,"  on p. 102 of Mitteilungen des Vereins für Geschichte der Stadt Nürnberg Heft 22 (1918).  "recoverable," I say, because OCR doesn't always work well on Fraktur.  A Findelhaus is a foundling hospital or orphanage.  There are no hits on the French equivalent couronne de l'Avent before 1943, and that one is in The Duden pictorial encyclopedia in five languages, in which the Advent wreath (or "garland") may bear (or at least has the circumference for) more than four candles.

Incorporate the following histories, along with the sources they cite, among others:

• Those listed under Gaudete Sunday specifically.
  
• Haemig, Mary Jane. "The Origin and Spread of the Advent Wreath." Lutheran Quarterly 19, no. 3 (December 31, 2005): 332–443.  My thanks to the Rev. Paul Gregory Alms for alerting me to the existence of this one, which, of course, I should have found on my own.  Helpful footnotes.
• Schlierf, Wilhelm Josef. Adventus Domini: Geschichte und Theologie des Advents in Liturgie und Brachtum der Westlichen Kirche. Mönchengladbach: B. Kühlen, 1989.
  

Civil valor

      "After all, we have gotten use to regarding as valor only valor in war (or the kind that is needed for flying in outer space), the kind which jingle-jangles with medals.  We have forgotten another concept of valor [(доблесть)]—civil valor.  And that's all our society needs, just that, just that, just that!  That's all we need and that's exactly what we haven't got."

     Aleksander I. Solzhenitsyn, The gulag archipelago 1918-1956:  an experiment in literary investigation I-II, trans. Thomas P. Whitney (New York:  Harper & Row, 1973), 461-462 (chap. 12, Tyurzak) = first full paragraph on p. 464 of the Paris (YMCA - Press) Russian edition of 1973.  Cf. Alexievich.

"the earth speaks to us of Heaven, or why would we want to go there?"

      Jayber Crow, in Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow:  a novel, chap 32 ("Seen afar").  "This is a book about Heaven.  I know it now" (chap. 31, "The nest egg"); "This is, as I said and believe, a book about Heaven" (chap. 32).

Gaudete Sunday didn't really start to become "Gaudete Sunday"-as-we-know-it-today until the modern period in general, and the nineteenth century in particular

"we must examine more carefully those observances that are considered 'traditional.' . . .  It is not enough to assume that liturgies that look archaic or anachronistic are as old as they claim to be. . . ."

     John F. Romano, "Joy in waiting?  The history of Gaudete Sunday," Medieval studies 72 (2010):  123 (75-124).  More detail from Romano to follow as time allows, but he confirms what, from Schlierf and much more recently Haennig, I have long known about the Advent wreath as well.  Heavily but not wholly dependent on Romano is Marco Benini, "'Freut euch im Herrn zu jeder Zeit!  Der dritte Advent ist der sogennante Gaudete-Sonntag mit der liturgischen Farbe Rosa.  Woher kommt das und wie feiern wir diese Freude?," Gottesdienst:  Zeitschrift der Liturgischen Institute Deutschlands, Österreichs und der Schweiz 58, no. 23/24 (November 2024):  257-259, as supplied to me by Benini himself.  "More detailed" than the latter are pp. 5-27 in Glaube und Gedächtnis:  Studien zur Liturgie in Geschichte und Pastoral, Festschrift Jürgen Bärsch zum 65. Geburtstag, hrsg. Marco Benini, Florian Kluger, & Benedict Winkel (Münster:  Aschendorff, 2024).  Cf. my post on the Advent wreath.
     Here follows a chronology (IN PROGRESS!) dependent on the sources above:

• [Romano.]  Followed here by the last two paragraphs of Benini's 2024 article in Gottesdienst:
   
• 1839:  Johann Hinrich Wichern of the Rauhes Haus in Hamburg sets up a wagon wheel (Wagenrad) bearing a candle for every day of Advent, considered as an anticipation of Christmas:  white candles for the Sundays, and red candles for the weekdays (Benini).
  
• 1860 (?):  The greens on the walls of the Rauhes Haus are transferred to the wagon wheel (Romano).
  
• 1925:  The four-becandled Advent wreath promoted (gefördert) by the youth movement of Quickborn begins to take hold in Catholic churches, beginning in Cologne, and in private Catholic (?) homes (Benini, 259).
• 1927:  The Catholic priest Pius Parsch first mentions [the four-becandled Advent wreath?] in his liturgical calendar (Liturgiekalender).
• 1932:  Fr. Parsch makes (once again?) no mention of the colors of the candles in his Adventabend:  Vorlagen und Winke für Heimabende (Benini 259).
  
  
• 1941 [October 6-10]:  The Cologn-ian refugee Therese Mueller introduces the custom at the National Liturgical Week [in St. Paul, MN] (Benini 259).
• _____:  Fr. Martin Hellrieger [of St. Louis, who immigrated from Heppenheimer as a child, and who was influential in the liturgical movement in the United States,] insists on replacing the red Advent candles of Germany with violet or rose candles in order that they might correspond to [what had only relatively recently become?] the liturgical colors (Benini 259).
  
• The rose candle we [therefore] owe (verdankt sich) to the [early 20th-century) liturgical movement in the United States, such that where one sees now the use of a rose or sometimes a violet candle in Germany that is a reimportation (Reimport) (Benini 259).
• post-1965:  The post-Vatican-II liturgical reform strengthens the emphasis on joy in the readings, prayers, and chants of the Third Sunday (Benini 259).
  

Yeo on Carlisle

      Douglas Yeo, "A message of hope and good news—told with a trombone," The last trombone, 17 December 2024.

May the instruction of Heavenly Wisdom transform us into members of His wedding party (eius . . . consortes)

T'oros Roslin, Wise and foolish virgins,
Gospel book, Walters Art Gallery
W.539 (1262), fol. 106v

"Almighty and merciful God, may no earthly undertaking hinder those who set out in haste to meet your Son, but may our learning of heavenly wisdom gain us admittance to his company, who", etc.

"Omnipotens et misericors Deus, in tui occursum Filii festinantes nulla opera terreni actus impediant, sed sapientiae caelestis eruditio nos faciat eius esse consortes.  Qui", etc.

     Collect for the Second Sunday of Advent, current (which is to say, not even 1962) Roman missal.  This is not in Bruylants, but vol. 14 of Corpus orationum fingers the differently-ordered no. 2669 in vol. 4,

Festinantes, omnipotens deus, in occursum filii tui domini nostri nulla impediant opera actus terreni sed caelestis sapientiae eruditio faciat nos eius esse consortes

which occurs in the mid-8th-century Old Gelasian Sacramentary that "is modelled on a type that largely represents Roman presbyteral practice around the middle of the 7th cent[ury]" (ODCC, 4th ed. (2022)).  (According to Fr. John Zuhlsdorf, at least, it occurs also in "the so-called Rotulus ('scroll') of Ravenna, dated perhaps as early as the 5th century."  On the resort to the Rotulus of Ravenna throughout Advent on the part of those revising the Missal after the Second Vatican Council, see, among other things, John F. Romano, "Joy in waiting?  The history of Gaudete Sunday," Medieval studies 72 (2010):  118-119 (75-124).)
     May the instruction of Heavenly Wisdom | instruction in heavenly wisdom | erudition in heavenly wisdom | etc.