The Candle of Joy ~ Advent Week #3

Welcome to Advent week #3. The third week of Advent is the week of Joy!

I don’t know about y’all but I have been having fun reading about the meaning behind each Advent week’s candle!!! The third week of this holy time of reflection is known as “the Shepherd Candle,” where the joy that our Great Shepherd has been born, according to writer Hope Bolinger at Christianity.com. This is really perfect timing to me as I have been rereading in the gospel of Luke, chapter 2…

Good tidings of great joy!

The angels have just visited the shepherds in the fields somewhere outside of Jerusalem but have just gone away (Luke 2:15), so now the shepherds decide to go into the city to see this Savior, this “newborn babe…”

Our young shepherd here looks on at the newborn Savior, part of this Italian Nativity we bought more than 20 years ago, when Costco was Price Club (in California). I love the serene look of this shepherd’s face and his small flock of sheep, who look to him for guidance just as we look to our Savior for his lead… I will share the whole mantel decorated in a separate post. For now, here is a link to a similar Holy Family to ours and another with Wisemen and the Holy Family.

Our friend Amber of Follow the Yellow Brick Home shared her beautiful home at Share Your Style this past week and I noticed that she had a “Joy” pillow! It fits out theme. 🙂

Joy and Why a Pink Candle for Week 3?

Hope Bolinger also writes that the use of a pink candle for Week 3 of Advent has lots of theories behind its use but “has its roots in something known as Gaudete Sunday.” Father Tim wrote in his blogpost, What’s Up With the Pink Candle?, that the pink or rose colored candle is used because of Gaudete Sunday where the “introit (intro) to the [Catholic] mass begins ‘Gaudete in Domino semper: iterum dico, gaudete” meaning “Rejoice in the Lord always: again I say rejoice.’ ” Sometimes the priests would wear pink vestments on this third Sunday of Advent.

“During this third week of Advent, this Sunday celebrates the passage Phillipians 4:4-5, its verses extolling readers to “rejoice” for “indeed the Lord is near,” states Ms. Bolinger.

4 Always be full of joy in the Lord. I say it again, rejoice! 5 Let everyone see that you are considerate in all you do. Remember, the Lord is coming soon.

Philippians 4:4-5 NLT, apostle Paul in a letter to the church at Philippi

Here in this week’s tablescape I’ve lit the two lavender candles and one pink candle. *Ignore the second pink candle… 😉 I still need to find a third lavender one. For this week, I thought about joy and how winter whites always bring me a lot of joy, so I decided to go with white for purity, and for winter, as my theme.

I found this dresser scarf/table runner at an antique shop in Idaho back when our son was pole vaulting at a winter invitational in Pocatello. The hand sewing is so fine that it is very difficult to tell which side of this linen piece is the right side. Amazing needlework!

Birds are also part of this week’s theme and I remembered I had a few white creamware birds so they flew out to the table to join in the Advent celebration. They were followed shortly by a pair of s/p shakers, Royal Doulton’s Old Country Roses, which were found at a seconds shop at a local outdoor mall in Lake Elsinore, California, many years ago now. The sweet bird napkins I found in Fallbrook, California at a fall market sales event for $5.00 for four. They are precious with their saying of:

I sing because I’m happy!

The brown writing on the napkins inspired the use of the Johnson Bros. Friendly Village winter set of teacups around the table. Winter Greetings by Catherine McClurg for Lenox creamer and sugar round out the pretties on the table.

I changed out the large wreath from Advent Week #2 for some simple Nordic style boughs which were given to me by Laura Ingalls Gunn of Decor to Adore several years ago at a DFW bloggers Christmas luncheon and shopping day. Wish we could have met up again this year! Maybe in 2021. 🙂 The soft pine boughs look lovely overlaid on the gilded Advent wreath. The fifth candle is awaiting Christmas week and is a vanilla candle with pine boughs and holly embedded in the wax.

I’ve set the table with a nice breakfast served with tea in mind. Mr. Ethereal and I do like to cook breakfasts on at least one day each weekend, if we get up around the same time. He really liked this morning’s table setting!

Our Christmas cactus is blooming happily and is enjoying fresh soil in this sweet blue and white pot I found for it online. I am happy to use this antique potting stand for it although the stand still needs refinishing. The cactus looks happy there and indeed it should! It blooms for our Savior, Christ Jesus!!!

My hope is that these posts about this time of Advent bring you much joy! I have enjoyed creating each tablescape with you in mind and our Savior’s happy birth… The little Noel signs at each placesetting came from Judith of Botanic Bleu and her annual French Country Christmas Sales event just this last weekend.

If you missed either of the two previous posts, you can find them here and here.

Blessings to you,

Barb