Why is Advent Blue?
Got a good question from a member yesterday:
The church I grew up in used the color purple for the season of Advent, including the pastor's stole, the paraments on the altar, and even the Advent candles. Yet at Our Savior's, we use the color blue. Why?
Liturgical color is a very nerdy thing to find interesting, but I think it's fascinating. Whether you realize it or not, just about everything we do in worship is designed to communicate something. When you learn more about these traditions, the experience of worship becomes deeper and richer.
Just like the leaves on the trees help us to recognize the seasons of the calendar year, the colors we use throughout the seasons of the church year help us to appreciate the changing church calendar.
The calendar starts with the First Sunday of Advent. Advent is the season of preparation as we get ready for Christmas (and the Second Coming of Christ). Since at least the 13th Century, the Church has primarily used Purple for Advent because part of our preparation for the coming of Christ is repentance. Purple is considered a penitential color, and so many churches connect Lent and Advent together by using the color purple for both.
However, among Swedish Lutherans the tradition for centuries has been to use Blue for Advent. There is a lot of debate as to where they got this tradition. Some think it's connected to the "Sarum rite" churches in England starting in around the 11th Century, and thus the liturgical color of blue is sometimes called "Sarum blue." However, this origin is disputed.
After the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, there was a huge liturgical reform movement across all of the Christian churches, not just the Roman Catholic Church. By the 1970s, there was a greater emphasis on the idea of blue as a color of hope, a hope which is fulfilled when Christ comes to us at Christmas. Blue is also described as the color of the sky just before the sun rises, and blue is also the color traditionally associated with the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The change to Blue for Advent (with Purple remaining an acceptable option) was embraced by the predecessor churches of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America with the publication of Lutheran Book of Worship, the green hymnal. The newest hymnal, Evangelical Lutheran Worship, (red hymnal) went a step further by saying that Advent is only a Blue season. Other Lutheran denominations in North America such as the LCMS have, in their most recent hymnals, also moved to Blue as the primary liturgical color recommended for Advent.
So to return to the question: why does Our Savior's use Blue for Advent? Primarily because of our congregation's Scandinavian heritage and the historic reforms of the liturgy begun in the 1970s.
The cycle of the church’s liturgical calendar.
