Our Advent traditions are simple by design — a nightly reading around the table, a candle lit each week, a paper chain the children count down with more enthusiasm than patience. None of it is elaborate. All of it repeats, on purpose, every single December.
Luke’s account of the angel’s announcement — good news of great joy for all people (Luke 2:10) — is a story simple enough for a four-year-old to grasp and rich enough that I am still finding new layers in my thirties. Repetition, I have decided, is not the enemy of meaning in a family’s spiritual life. It is often exactly how meaning gets built deep enough to last.