Holiday Hints: The First Sunday of Advent

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All right! Here's the beginning of your Happy Holidays! Here's what you need to celebrate Advent in a secular style. 4 white candles of your choice. (You'll need more than 4 votives and tapers so that you can replace them as they burn down) Arrange in a row or a circle. (You may want to add a 5th Candle for Christmas Day. But our focus here is not religious. Our focus is on your building a stronger relationship and on trying on/trying out the holiday traditions that will define your marriage and your new family for years to come.)

Any way take your 4 candles. I often arrange mine with a little greenery. It's the first Sunday of Advent today, but if you look at European Advent Calendars, they run from the first of December to the 24th. This is our prep day! (You don't lose any points, however, for burning your first candle tonight!) So take a little time and dig everything out for tomorrow evening. (You don't lose any points, however, for burning your first candle tonight!) Put your Advent "wreath" or plate or row, in a room where you spend a lot of time together. Put it somewhere safe. (And remember, boys and girls, we don't leave candles unattended!)

The first week of Advent is about hope. This period of your engagement is the period of recognizing what your hopes and dreams are. It's a period of coming to terms with how you and your beloved are going to plan for and live into your hopes and dreams. You are birthing your marriage into your world and your community. Why wouldn't you work just as hard on your marriage planning as you would your wedding planning? And why not start figuring out how you want to celebrate the holidays so that that when people begin to ask you what you're doing for the holidays, you can say, "Oh, we're having our first annual… "

Tomorrow we'll start with suggestions for building relationship and building traditions from one of the therapists from Council For Relationships. But for tonight, if you get everything together, go ahead and light one candle and think about how miraculous it is that the two of you have found one another and are embarking on this fabulous, ridiculous, wondrous thing called marriage — and that you're moving into this holiday season together. How great is that?

One more way to move from "I do" to happily and healthily ever after.

(And remember, I need your help to keep this column current and interesting. Write to me with ideas to explore. Put The Wedding Priestess in the subject line.)