What I Wore Sunday: What I Didn’t Wear Sunday, and Advent Music Fights

Happy Advent, y’all!

This picture —>
pretty much expresses my confusion with the season. I’m thinking that pretty soon the fine ladies at Fine Linen and Purple are going to have to add some new rules to the What I Wore Sunday link-up in order to prevent such wretched pictures from being a part of it…

Ehem.

Anyway.

Advent is a season of joyous penance. It is a season which has so completely lost its meaning that even the bishops are rather vague about what should be done. Their most ancient statement on penance says that we need liturgical renewal rather than austerities. It is unclear what that really means, and equally unclear whether such an approach has done any good.

We are left with the knowledge that “Advent is a period of devout and expectant delight.” And “Advent (like Lent) includes an element of penance in the sense of preparing, quieting and disciplining our hearts for the full joy of Christmas.”

I don’t have answers, but I suppose that our little traditions always show what we really think, even when we say we have no answers.

We will have our typical seasonal changes such as eliminating certain foods during the week and giving to charity what we can trim from the grocery budget. But then on Sundays we will celebrate with lovely food and peaceful evening prayers.

Today I grabbed my purple dress to wear because, well, what else would I wear?

I wore wretchedly uncomfortable black tights to church, but pulled them off in the car on the way home (no I wasn’t the one driving). If it were Lent I would have been more conflicted about the penance of uncomfortable clothing. But this is Advent, so I will go for simplicity which gives time to focus on things other than clothing, whether uncomfortable or beautiful.

When we got home my husband turned on his favorite Advent music.

We have very different taste in music. I do not want to spend each evening of Advent listening to that! I would much rather listen to something like this:

What can I say? Clearly God put us together to help us learn from our differences.

In all seriousness, I cannot find a version of O Come, O Come Emmanuel that I really love. The Civil Wars version is beautiful:

But it isn’t the perfect classic version that I really want to hear on repeat throughout all of  Advent.

So, can you help me out with a link to your favorite version of your favorite Advent song?

Catholic Quirks , , ,

7 comments


  1. I am with you on the Advent music! Also, I feel left out that I do not own a purple dress! It seems I was unaware of this Catholic staple!!
    I almost went the praying hands pose route. I like it!

  2. I have a purple dress but I think it’s starting to get worn out from all the Advent and Lent wearing. It’s terribly comfy, though.

  3. Sarah B.

    Have you tried Rosie Thomas version? Or Enya? I like both pretty well.

    Cute dress!

  4. I wish I had thought of wearing purple for Advent! But, then again, the only purple items of clothing I have are a prom dress and a shirt I have no pants for :-)
    I love the way your dress gathers in at the waist–it looks so stylish!

  5. I love “People Look East”, but I haven’t really found a fav. version yet. Cute dress- perfect for Advent!

  6. I have to say I love that first version…but I think I might feel suicidal if I had *anything* on repeat all the way through the season. :) I wish we had more than one pivotal Advent song.

    • Rae

      Ha! I’d get sick of the song too if “repeat” was any more than a dream in my head. Aside from Josh playing the song once yesterday, and then me playing several versions while writing up this post, I’ve probably heard the song once in the past year. We had songs like “Soon and Very Soon” at mass yesterday, and Josh reminded me that we’ll probably have to go to a different mass time if I expect to hear O Come O Come Emmanuel at church this season.

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