What Does the Advent Wreath Symbolize? The Circle and the Candles

Christmas as a ChristianSee all 36 articles in this series

The Advent wreath stands for the eternal God and for Christ, the light coming into the world. Its circle has no end, as God has none, and its evergreen branches are a sign of life and hope. Its four candles mark the four Sundays of Advent, and one more is lit each Sunday as Christmas comes nearer.

The wreath began with a question children kept asking. At the Rauhes Haus, a home for poor and orphaned children outside Hamburg, they asked Johann Hinrich Wichern again and again when Christmas would come, the house chronicle says. In 1839 he answered them with light, one more candle for every day of waiting. Scripture says what such waiting is for: “It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the LORD” (Lamentations 3:26).

A house that began with fourteen boys from the slums gave Christian homes across the world a way to wait for Christ. Today the Catholic Church’s Book of Blessings has an order for blessing the wreath, in church or at home, and the Reformed Church in America publishes readings for lighting its candles.

The circle has no beginning and no end, so it speaks of God, who has neither, or as the Reformed Church in America puts it, of “God’s constant and unchanging nature.” We light our candles before the God of whom the psalm sings, “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God” (Psalm 90:2). Our weeks of waiting are counted out inside a ring that has no first day and no last.

The branches stay green when the fields are bare, so they stand for life and hope, like the person in the first psalm who delights in God’s law, a tree planted by the water, whose “leaf also shall not wither” (Psalm 1:3). Some see in the green a first look ahead to the Christmas tree, and some see in it the family or parish gathered around it.

The candles are the light that is coming, the light God gave the world at Christmas in the birth of Jesus. Wichern meant them that way from the start, drawing on the Bible’s picture of Christ as the great light, to deepen the children’s waiting for his coming. One more is lit each week, and the light on the table grows as the day comes nearer.

Johann Hinrich Wichern made the first one in 1839, at the Rauhes Haus he had opened six years earlier in an old farmhouse at Horn, then a village outside Hamburg. He was a Protestant theologian, and he later founded the Inner Mission, the forerunner of the German churches’ welfare work. His first wreath was a wooden wheel about the size of a cart wheel, with no greenery on it, hung from the ceiling of the prayer hall. It carried a candle for every day from the first Sunday of Advent to Christmas Eve. Each day the children gathered for prayer and one more candle was lit, so that on Christmas Eve every light was burning. He also meant it, the chronicle adds, to teach them to count. Wichern remembered the children’s eyes looking up merrily at the chandelier. They knew what they were seeing: the first light was burning, because it was the first day of Advent.

The number of candles changed every year with the date of the first Sunday. In 2026, with Advent beginning on 29 November, Wichern’s wheel would carry 26. The story usually told is that four large white candles stood for the Sundays and small red ones for the weekdays, and the Rauhes Haus still hung its wreath that way in 2020. That same year its spokesman said there is no evidence that Wichern used different candles for Sundays and weekdays, and some signs that they were all alike at first. The house’s only picture of the first wreath is a drawing, and its candles are all the same size.

The wheel at the Rauhes Haus had fir branches and white ribbons by about 1860, and from there the custom went out through Protestant towns in northern Germany, carried by parish halls, children’s homes and schools. Families wanted it in their own living rooms, and a wheel of two dozen candles was far too big for them; set closer together on a smaller ring, the candles would have melted one another. So the weekday candles were left out and the four Sunday candles kept. The wreath on our tables is that children’s chandelier, made small enough for a family.

Catholic churches took it up in the twentieth century: the first Advent wreath in a Catholic church is recorded in Cologne in 1925, one was first seen in Munich in 1930, and in Austria and the Alpine valleys it became common only after the Second World War. A light first hung for poor boys in a Protestant home was burning in Catholic churches within ninety years, and today Catholic and Protestant families light it alike. In Austria, as in neighboring Bavaria, the wreath traditionally follows the colors of the season, with three violet candles and one rose, while Protestant churches in Germany often use red ribbons and red candles.

The wreath was misused too, in Germany’s darkest years. The folklorist Ingeborg Weber-Kellermann recalled a version the Nazi party proposed in the 1930s and 1940s, with new words for the candles: one for soldiers and one for Hitler. The Evangelical Church in Germany’s news portal, evangelisch.de, notes that the wreath was rarely so grossly distorted, and warns that it is emptied of meaning whenever its candles stop standing for Christ, the light of the world, and only count the days until the presents. That warning reaches our own Decembers too. A wreath can sit on the table all Advent and become one more way of counting down to the shopping, and then the children’s question has lost its answer. Each time we strike the match, the light is there to tell us who is coming.

You may read that the Advent wreath goes back to people in northern Europe who lit candles in the darkest weeks of the year long before Christ. No record shows it. The wreath only seems ancient: Hamburg’s history museums date its birth to less than two hundred years ago, in what is now the middle of Hamburg, in a home for poor children.

Wreaths themselves are far older than Wichern’s: in the ancient world a wreath, usually of laurel, was a sign of victory, and the Austrian bishops’ news service suggests that Wichern may have had in mind Christ’s victory over sin and death. An article on evangelisch.de wonders whether he also had in mind the Hanukkah lamp, on which one more light is lit on each of the eight days of the Jewish feast in December.

One candle on the first Sunday, two on the second, three on the third and all four on the fourth. The Catholic Book of Blessings puts it simply: “The candles represent the four weeks of Advent and the number of candles lighted each week corresponds to the number of the current week of Advent.” Where one candle is rose, it is lit on the third Sunday.

The candles’ names and colors differ from church to church, from hope, peace, joy and love to the Prophets, Bethlehem, the Shepherds and the Angels, and they are explained in what the Advent colors mean. Some families add a fifth, white candle in the middle and light it at Christmas.

In 2026 the candles are lit on these days. The readings beside them are only suggestions, each short enough to read before a meal:

Day in 2026	Candles lit	A short reading
Sunday 29 November	One	Isaiah 2:5
Sunday 6 December	Two	Isaiah 40:3
Sunday 13 December	Three (rose, where used)	Isaiah 35:1–2
Sunday 20 December	Four	Isaiah 7:14
Christmas Eve, 24 December	All four, and a white center candle if you have one	Luke 2:1–20

The readings move from promise toward birth. The first Sunday calls us, “come ye, and let us walk in the light of the LORD” (Isaiah 2:5). The second gives the voice in the wilderness: “Prepare ye the way of the LORD” (Isaiah 40:3). On the third, the rose Sunday, “the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose” (Isaiah 35:1). The fourth gives the sign: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14). On Christmas Eve we read the birth itself, and the shepherds “keeping watch over their flock by night” (Luke 2:8).

Simply. The Book of Blessings says the wreath is blessed on the first Sunday of Advent or the evening before, and that at home “it is appropriate that it be blessed by a parent or another member of the family.” When the candles are lit, the family says the opening prayer of that Sunday’s Mass, and “the lighting of the candles may be preceded or followed by an Advent hymn and a Scripture reading. The lighting of the Advent Wreath may fittingly be included as a part of the evening meal.” The Reformed Church in America offers readings for the candles, for worship or for home, and suggests pairing each one with a prayer or a song.

Nothing more is needed than a table, a match and a few minutes. Light the candles for the week, read the passage, and pray in your own words or with a prayer for Advent. Children can take turns striking the match, as long as someone older sits close by. In church, the wreath is often hung or set where everyone can see it, and its candles are lit before Mass or just before the opening prayer.

The wreath marks the Sundays, and a family that wants something for the evenings between them might hang our calendar near it, with a painting, a verse, two sentences of the story and a short prayer for each day from 1 December to Christmas. We print each one to order and can send it to the United States and Canada.

Advent in Paintings, our wall calendar

When we light the first candle on 29 November, we sit where those children sat in 1839, under the light, counting the days to Christ. Their question is ours, and so is the answer God gave long before any wreath: “though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry” (Habakkuk 2:3).

---

• What do the Advent colors mean?
• Preparing your heart for Christmas: an Advent devotional guide
• 12 prayers for Advent
• Christmas bells, lights and wreaths and their Christian meanings
• What is the Christmas novena?

More from this seriesChristmas as a ChristianSee all 36 articles