Christmas Decorations in Two Stages?

My family is going to try a Christmas-decoration suggestion from Anglicans Online, apropos of preserving the distinction between Advent and Christmas:

This week we find ourselves thinking about Advent and the secularisation of Christmas, and about an idea for recovering Advent from the commercial onslaught of this season.  *  *  *

We are mulling over several ideas for symbolic Advent acts this year.

For example, we've thought about waiting until December 24 and then hanging religious ornaments on the tree in the lobby of the office building, which currently sports peppermint canes, bells, sleighs, and round glass balls.

We've suggested to our friends with young children, who feel peer pressure to put up the family Christmas decorations this week, that they divide the decoration ceremonies into two parts, secular and sacred. The glass balls and reindeer go on the Christmas tree this week; the angels and baby-in-a-manger and Star of Bethlehem are added on the 24th before bedtime, explicitly dividing the rituals into holiday rituals and Christmas rituals.

The waiting and brooding that defines Advent is not an event; it's a prayer, a state of mind, an emptiness. Besides Advent music, there's no easy way to symbolise it.

But we can certainly develop rituals, for the end of Advent, that symbolise the end of Advent, the end of the waiting, the coming of Christ.

(Extra paragraphing added.)

Comments

[bls]

I put up a simple, plain fir wreath on my front door, decorated only with one purple bow and two ribbon-ends trailing down to blow in the winds, in imitation of the wreaths on the facade of the parish where I've been attending services lately. (Quite a few other Episcopal Churches in this area have done this, also.)

It looks very solemn and dignified and elegant and Advent-ish. Just right.