A long time ago, in a cold city in Germany called Hamburg, there was an old house with a thatched roof. It stood out in a field beyond the edge of the city, and it had a funny name: the Rauhes Haus. It came from a man called Ruge who had lived there long before: "Ruge's house" wore down over the years into "Rauhes Haus", and nobody remembered why anymore. The children who had nowhere else to go lived there.

The man who looked after them was a pastor named Johann Hinrich Wichern. He opened that house in 1833, when he was still quite young, to take in the poorest boys and girls of Hamburg. The children lived in small groups, like families: a dozen in each little house, with a grown-up living alongside them. They learned to read, they looked after the garden, they ate at the same table, and they all prayed together in one big room.

Every year the same thing happened when December came. The cold grew sharper, the nights grew longer, and somebody would tug at the pastor's sleeve.

— How many days until Christmas?

Wichern would answer. The next day another child asked. Then another. Then another one after that. Because waiting is hard, and it is harder still when you cannot see the waiting getting any smaller.

So, in the year 1839, the pastor had an idea.

He found a wooden wheel, as big as the wheel of a farm cart, and hung it from the ceiling of the room where everyone prayed. Around the rim he fitted candles. Four large white ones, one for each Sunday of Advent. And in between them, one small red candle for every other day, right up to Christmas Eve.

On the afternoon of the first Sunday of Advent, the children came into the room. The pastor lit a single candle. One small light, all by itself, up above their heads.

The next day he lit two. Then three. Then four.

And the children did not need to ask anything anymore. They only had to look up and count. The candles that were burning were the days that had gone. The candles still dark were the days left to wait. The waiting had become something you could see. Every day it grew a little smaller, and every day the room grew a little brighter.

On Christmas night the whole wheel was alight. Not one candle was left unlit. That room, so dark all through December, shone from the ceiling right down to the floor.

People who visited the house saw the wheel of candles and wanted one of their own. But a cartwheel does not fit in a small parlour. So they began making smaller wreaths, trimmed with green branches and ribbons, and kept only the four big candles: one for each Sunday.

That is the one you know. The Advent wreath in church, or on the table at home, with four candles around it. On the first Sunday you light one. On the second, two. On the third, three. On the fourth, four, and by then Christmas is very close indeed.

Advent is that time of waiting. Four weeks to make the heart ready before Jesus comes. And the wreath is there for the very same reason as Pastor Wichern's wheel: so that you can see with your own eyes that each day that passes makes the night a little smaller and the light a little larger.