Advent Calendar and Belief Systems

I got an Advent Calendar for me and Wee One to use for the next month. It is the first time I have had one in years, and it is the first kind of Christmas tradition that I’m starting to do with WO. I hope it will create more than an echo of the warmth for WO that I had as a child. What traditions/rituals your family have?

I realize that talking about Advent and Christmas then only refers to the Christian tradition, and I do not want to exclude my non-Christian readers. Are there other winter/year end/solstice rituals you employ?

In one of my mom groups on FB, someone asked about other people’s belief systems, just to find out about different ones she could go research. Did you know about all of these various traditions?!

• Celtic pagan/lutheran
• Pagan.. a bit of budisism and some godly beliefs.
• Nonfoundational Christian – Sorta obscure and probably uninteresting if you don’t care about Heideggerian philosophy, negative theology, narrative theory, pre-modern epistemology, post-structuralusm, and/or deconstruction.
• Pentecostal Christian
• Asatru/heathen, specifically. Specifically think Nordic Gods/Goddesses. Some follow the tenets of Odin, some of Loki, etc. Some classify themselves as Odinists, Heathens, Pagans, Asatru, etc. just depends on their belief structure and their kindred or if they are a solo practitioner.
• Jewish, Sephardic (aka non Yiddish speaking, aka “brown Jews.”)
• Buddhist/pagan/Native American
• Agnostic – not a religion, but a viewpoint. Same with Atheist.
• Trying to find my belief set. I’m very interested in pantheism.
• Christian, Church of Christ
• Check out SRF (Self Realization Fellowship) 
• Mennonite
• Unitarian Universalist!
• Taoism is one we identify most closely as. We use imagery and analogies from many different faiths to talk about our life experiences. We also do a lot with the chakra system.
• Ashkenazic Jew, so Eastern European. Liberal. So my Yiddishkeit is on point