Introducing the Advent Zine

Advent has been a part of my family’s Christmas season as long as I can remember (thanks to a Finnish member of our ward in Boston,) and my wife Cece has been learning about and gathering Advent resources for years, even before we met. Since our marriage, we’ve honed and combined our respective traditions into something we both find really meaningful. This year, in collaboration with The Arch-Hive, Cece and I are proud to offer An Advent Reflection—a zine based on the practices we’ve developed over the past five years, heavily influenced by a robust community of thinkers and writers (see below for a partial list.) Thanks to expert design work by Camilla Stark and Zach Collier, we love how the guide turned out and we’re excited to share it with you!

It’s a 12-page zine, designed to be an open-and-go guide for weekly Advent devotionals. (We’ve included the first week above so you can get a taste for how it works.) It’s intentionally kept very simple, designed to be expanded on, adapted, and otherwise remixed to meet your own personal interests, beliefs, and needs.

Every Sunday of Advent, we discuss one of the traditional Advent themes—hope, peace, joy, and love. For each of these, our zine includes a few Bible verses to read, a (Mormon) historical figure we think exemplifies that particular value, a few short quotes, some questions to consider/discuss, and suggestions for music to listen to and sing. We've also included a short devotional for Christmas Eve, focused on the concept of creative, collaborative obedience.

Though it was designed with a Mormon audience in mind and draws heavily on Christian scriptures and traditions, we think people of a variety of beliefs (or even no real religious belief at all) could find something of value here. Our hope is to spark thoughts & discussion on how we can lean into hope, peace, joy, and love this season, and on how we can bring these things into the world together.

This zine reflects our efforts to draw on the richness and wisdom of the Christian liturgical calendar, offering just a taste of what we’ve learned in our own Mormon-inflected way. We hope this work will encourage you in your personal Advent and broader liturgical journeys!

Celebrating Advent, particularly in the sort of Mormon-inflected way modeled in our zine, has been a deeply enriching experience for me. Returning to these same themes and ideas and scriptural passages year after year has been comforting and challenging, offering a rewarding opportunity to think about how the last year has changed me and the way I think. Our hope is that you may experience something similar as you join us this year.

The first day of Advent is November 27. If you use this zine—or even if you don’t—we’d love to see and hear about how you’re celebrating this year.

The Zine is $5 (including shipping) and is available now on Etsy.