tVl. INTRODUCTION. 



21, occurs just at the beginning of tliis period, aud 

 is, therefore, the first winter feast of the Church. 

 Many children in convents make their first com- 

 munion this day, as well as on the Conception 

 OF OUR Lady, Dec. 8 : their appearance, all 

 dressed in white, with lighted tapers in their hands, 

 is very imposing ; as is also their repetition of the 

 baptismal vows at complin. 



Advent mostly begins in the last week in 

 November or first in December ; a period set apart 

 as a preparation ibr Christmas. On the Sundays 

 we now see the priest arrayed in the penitential 

 purple cassida. Wednesdays and Fridays, aud the 

 three Ember days following St. Lucy are kept as 

 fasts, and the whole pei'iod is one of preparation 

 and penance. 



Nature, which seems to respond to the ordi- 

 nances of religion, at this season is clothed in the 

 dark still gloomy weather of winter : it is a period 

 of expectation : we look to a new year and a new 

 birth, a regeneration of our physical and moral 

 condition. Cocks at this season crowing all night 

 long, are said, poetically, to purify the air against 

 the hallowed season of the Nativity, and it has 

 been otherwhere observed that the cocks, which 

 crow almost perpetually during this season, and 

 awaken with unusual clamour the little dark 

 wintry day, seem like the forewarning prophets, 

 and remind us of St. John the Baptist preaching 



