What Do the Advent Colors Mean? Purple, Pink, Blue and White

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Purple, or violet, is the color of Advent: the color of waiting for Christ and making ready for him. Catholics light three violet candles and one rose, and on the third Sunday the vestments turn rose, or pink, for joy. Many Lutherans use blue instead of purple, and at Christmas the church changes to white or gold.

Advent 2026 begins on Sunday 29 November. On its third Sunday, when the violet turns to rose, the Catholic Missal opens Mass with words Paul wrote from prison: “Rejoice in the Lord always: and again I say, Rejoice. Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand” (Philippians 4:4–5). Every color in the season answers that last sentence. Violet is the color of people who know he is near and not yet here. Rose tells them he is nearer. White says he has come.

In the Western churches four colors carry the season from its first Sunday to Christmas.

Color	When	What it says	Who uses it
Violet (purple)	All four weeks, from 29 November 2026	Waiting and making ready	Catholics; Methodist, Reformed and many other churches
Rose (pink)	Third Sunday, 13 December 2026	Joy: the Lord is near	Catholic churches, where it is the custom
Blue	All four weeks, in place of violet	Hope	Many Lutherans; some Methodist and Reformed churches
White or gold	From Christmas Eve	Christ is born: light and joy	Catholic, Lutheran and many other churches

For Catholics, the General Instruction of the Roman Missal settles the matter in two sentences: “Violet or purple is used in Advent and Lent,” and “Rose may be used, where it is the practice, on Gaudete Sunday (Third Sunday of Advent) and on Laetare Sunday (Fourth Sunday of Lent)” (no. 346). What the colors mean, the churches have worked out over many centuries, and they do not all hear the same thing in them.

It means readiness, and churches add other meanings to it: penance for some, Christ’s kingship for others. Lent wears the same violet, and a home blessing from the Catholic Diocese of Linz in Austria still calls violet the color of reflection and penance. The liturgy office of the Catholic bishops of England and Wales reads it another way in its notes on the season: violet in Advent “suggests a state of unfulfilled readiness and should no longer be regarded as an expression of penitence. It serves to set off the joyful white of Christmas with greater dramatic effect.” The church holds something back so that Christmas can be given whole. The Gloria is left out on the Sundays of Advent for the same reason, the notes add, “so that the Gloria, the hymn of the angels may resound with greater freshness on Christmas night.”

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America hears a king in the color. It notes that “Some assemblies use purple in Advent,” and calls it “a color associated with royalty as the church awaits the newborn king,” a different meaning from purple in Lent. The United Methodist Church holds the two meanings together: “Purple, representing both royalty and penitence, is traditionally used during Advent and Lent.” Whichever meaning a church stresses, the color asks of us what Jesus asked of everyone: “And what I say unto you I say unto all, Watch” (Mark 13:37).

The church took a long time to settle on a color for waiting. Pope Innocent III, who died in 1216, named four main colors (white, red, green and black) and mentioned violet only as one used now and then. The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1908 records that violet was in regular use from the thirteenth century, and that in the Roman Rite since Pope Pius V it has been the color of Advent. It is the color the church wears twice a year now, before the manger and before the empty tomb, and both times it says the same thing: he is coming, and we are getting ready.

Because it is the Sunday of rejoicing. Its name, Gaudete, is the first word of the chant that opens Mass that day, “Gaudete in Domino semper”: rejoice in the Lord always. The violet lightens to rose, and the church hears Paul’s reason for joy, “The Lord is at hand.” In 2026 Gaudete Sunday falls on 13 December, and at Catholic Mass that day another of Paul’s commands is read: “Rejoice evermore” (1 Thessalonians 5:16).

In parts of the church Advent once took on several features of Lent, and the rose Sunday was a pause in the penance. The same English notes say that Advent “is no longer considered a penitential season but a time of joyful expectation.” Elizabeth Harrington, a Catholic liturgy writer in Brisbane, wrote that it is no longer necessary to set one Sunday apart for a little light relief, since “All Sundays are days of festivity in any case!” She treats the color of the candles as a minor local custom, and the Missal leaves the choice to each place: rose “may be used, where it is the practice.” So a parish with no rose candle has lost nothing; it can light what it has and still rejoice on the third Sunday. Where rose is used, the church lets its joy show halfway through the waiting, and it belongs to only one other day in the year, Laetare Sunday in Lent.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America puts the two colors side by side: “Blue or purple is the appointed color for the season.” It gives blue the meaning of hope, and an origin: “This association originated in Scandinavia, probably because purple dye was too expensive for churches to use.” If that is right, the color of hope began with churches buying the cloth they could afford. The United Methodist Church allows it too, “Blue symbolizes hope and may also be used during Advent,” and the Reformed Church in America describes its Advent candles as “traditionally blue or purple.”

Anglican parishes dress Advent in violet or in blue, and their own history explains why both are at home there. Percy Dearmer, an Anglican priest who went through the old English church inventories, found that the bishops’ service books of London and Canterbury in the fifteenth century gave Advent “violet or purple”, and yet the inventories showed “a considerable amount of local variation.” Salisbury Cathedral, whose medieval rite is called the Sarum use, owned vestments of violet, purple and blue silk by 1222, and Dearmer said in 1899, “No one knows what the Sarum use as to colours was for Advent.” So a parish in blue and a parish in violet can both point to the same old English wardrobe, and neither has any reason to think the other has the season wrong.

The Roman Missal gives Advent no blue, which led to a small mix-up that Harrington told in 2003. A parish liturgy planner rang a church supplier to order blue candles for the wreath and was asked whether she was an Anglican, “since Catholics use purple candles at Advent, not blue ones!” In her own city, where Advent falls in summer, Harrington found a use for blue herself. She suggested hanging drapes of blue and mauve, and gave a second reason: “blue is Mary’s colour, and it seems especially appropriate for this season with which Mary is so closely associated.” No one waited for Christ as closely as the mother who carried him.

In the Catholic custom, three are violet and one is rose. The church’s Book of Blessings puts it simply: “According to tradition, three of the candles are violet and the fourth is rose. However, four violet or white candles may also be used.” The rose candle is lit on the third Sunday, with the rose vestments. The same Austrian blessing gives the meanings, violet for reflection and penance on the first, second and fourth Sundays and rose for the joy of Christmas coming on the third, and it mentions red candles too, which it reads as God’s love for people. Churches that use blue light blue candles. Some families and congregations set a fifth candle in the middle, and the Reformed Church in America calls it the Christ candle: “unlike the other candles, this candle is traditionally white.” It is lit on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, when “the full wreath of Advent candles is lit to symbolize that Christ, the light of the world, has arrived.” The wreath that began with one small flame on the first Sunday of Advent is full of light.

Many churches give each candle a name, and a name gives a family something to pray about as each one is lit. A Catholic parish in Atlanta calls them the Prophet’s Candle, the Bethlehem Candle, the Shepherd’s Candle and the Angel’s Candle, for hope, faith, joy and peace. In those names the four weeks walk through the Christmas story in order: the prophets who foretold him, the town where he was born, the shepherds who came with haste and the angels who sang. St Anne’s, a Church of England parish, names them hope, peace, joy and love, and other churches use other words in another order. The circle of evergreens, the order of lighting and where the wreath came from are told in what the Advent wreath symbolizes.

If your candles are the wrong color this year, they will still do their work. Harrington wrote that “it is the light growing in intensity during Advent as an additional candle is lit each week that is the symbol, not the colour of the candle.” One flame, then two, then three, then four: the light grows because the Lord is nearer.

Orthodox Christians prepare for Christmas with the Nativity Fast, forty days from 15 November. An Orthodox Church in America parish explains that the feast of Christ’s birth is “patterned after the celebration of the feast of the Lord’s Resurrection,” so Christmas has its own fast, as Easter does. On Saint Nicholas Day the evening hymn calls on the very places of the story to get ready: “Adorn yourself, O Cavern. Make ready, O Manger. O Shepherds and wise men, bring your gifts and bear witness. For the Virgin is coming bearing Christ in her womb.” Churches that follow the old (Julian) calendar keep Christmas on 25 December by that calendar, which falls on 7 January in ours, and so their fast begins on 28 November.

The color of the fast differs from one Orthodox church to another: in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, the diocese of Great Britain and Western Europe hangs its churches with red for the fast and white for the Nativity, and its handbook notes “certain limited variations” even within that church. Most Eastern rites, the Catholic Encyclopedia of 1908 observed, had no prescribed colors at all. So in one city an Orthodox church may be hung with red while a Catholic church nearby is in violet, and both are waiting for the same child.

Advent begins with the first evening prayer of the Sunday that falls on or nearest 30 November, said on the Saturday evening before it. It ends before the first evening prayer of Christmas. In 2026 its Sundays are 29 November, 6 December, 13 December (the rose Sunday) and 20 December. Christmas Day falls on a Friday, so the last week of waiting runs only from Sunday the 20th to the evening of Thursday the 24th, and on that evening, as Christmas begins, the violet is put away.

Because the first Sunday moves from year to year, home Advent calendars usually settle on 1 December and count to Christmas. Ours does the same, with a painting, a verse, two sentences of the story and a short prayer for each day. We print each one to order and can send it to the United States and Canada.

Advent in Paintings, our wall calendar

The Roman Missal gives white to the whole Christmas season, and on more solemn days it allows “sacred vestments … that are festive, that is, more precious, even if not of the color of the day.” In the United States, “Gold- or silver-colored vestments may be worn on more solemn occasions.” The ELCA’s colors give Christmas white as well, “calling to mind the purity of the newborn Christ, and to our light and joy in him. Some also use Gold.” The church brings out its finest cloth for a child laid in a manger, and the white lasts through the Christmas season.

From violet to white, the colors move toward the light. John says of the child we wait for, “That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world” (John 1:9). Through Advent the violet keeps us watching and the rose reminds us he is near. Paul’s words hold all four weeks: “The night is far spent, the day is at hand” (Romans 13:12).

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• What does the Advent wreath symbolize?
• Preparing your heart for Christmas: an Advent devotional guide
• 12 prayers for Advent
• What is Christmastide?
• Catholic Christmas traditions from Advent to the Baptism of the Lord

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