By Bob Zyskowski

This Advent, let’s not just put an Advent Wreath out as a decoration.

Let’s really do Advent.

Let’s gather family or friends each week of the Advent season and pray that beautiful ritual together.

We can do this, and we don’t have to be embarrassed about it, either.

Let’s pick a day of the week and a time that works for the folks we’d like to join us.

We might have to say something like, “Hey, remember praying around the Advent Wreath when we were kids? Let’s do that again this year.”

Let’s invite friends, neighbors, grandparents, children and grandchildren.

Keep it short and sweet.

Our Advent Wreath ceremony doesn’t have to be a major production – 10, 15 minutes max.

That’s not too much to ask.

And it’s pretty simple. The Intermountain Catholic newspaper is making it easy by publishing an Advent Wreath ritual each of the four weeks of the Advent season.

Clip it out of the paper or pull it up on www.icatholic.org and make all the copies you need. And why?

Because it will be the first step in observing, living and celebrating the new church year.

Because it will get us started remembering our call to holiness.

And just think: If we do Advent right – if we prepare the way of the Lord in our own lives, in our own households, in our own communities – Christmas this year may just be less about presents and more about the gift that we all received with the Birth of the Child Jesus.

Bob Zyskowski is associate publisher of The Catholic Spirit, newspaper of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.