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Advent

Four weeks of waiting for Christmas, spent baking spiced biscuits and drinking mulled wine.

An acolyte lighting Advent candles on Christmas Eve at Calvary Episcopal Church in Rochester, Minnesota, United States
Photo: Jonathunder, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

What is eaten for Advent

Advent begins four Sundays before Christmas. It was once a fast, and it is now the season of Christmas baking and markets. German and Austrian kitchens turn out dozens of kinds of biscuit, among them vanilla crescents and lebkuchen, and stollen, a fruit bread that is baked early and left to ripen. Markets sell mulled wine, called Glühwein in German and glögg in the north. In Britain the Christmas pudding is by custom mixed on the Sunday before Advent, with each person taking a turn to stir.

The dishes

StollenFruit bread baked early and kept until Christmas.LebkuchenSpiced honey biscuits of the Christmas markets.Mulled wineHot spiced wine sold at every market.VanillekipferlVanilla crescent biscuits.Christmas puddingMixed on Stir-up Sunday and left to mature.Speculoos biscuitSpiced biscuits pressed in moulds.
About this page

Written by the Thali desk with AI assistance. Background: "Advent" on Wikipedia. Customs differ from family to family and place to place. If this is your tradition and we have it wrong, tell us.

Photo credits on this page

The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.

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