Advent Candle Colors: Meaning, Order and When to Light Each One

What are the Advent candle colors?

The Advent candle colors in most Catholic and many Protestant homes are three purple candles and one pink candle. Purple, sometimes called violet, is the liturgical color of the season. Pink, properly called rose, belongs to the third Sunday only. A fifth candle, white, often stands in the middle of the wreath and is lit at Christmas.

That is the version you will see in most American churches and in most of the Advent kits sold in stores. It is not the only correct one. Lutheran and many Methodist congregations prefer blue. In Britain and across much of Germany and Scandinavia, four red candles are at least as common as purple. Orthodox families who keep a wreath use six candles in six colors, because their pre-Christmas fast is longer. None of these is a mistake. They are different traditions, each with its own reasoning, and we go through them below.

In what order do you light the Advent candles?

You light the Advent candles in a fixed order, one more each Sunday: the first purple candle on the first Sunday of Advent, a second purple candle on the second Sunday, the pink candle on the third Sunday and the last purple candle on the fourth. Each week you relight the candles from the weeks before, so by the fourth Sunday all four are burning together.

The dates follow one rule: the first Sunday of Advent is the fourth Sunday before December 25. Because Christmas 2026 falls on a Friday, Advent 2026 begins on November 29 and the fourth Sunday is December 20, five days before Christmas. In 2027 Christmas is a Saturday, so the season starts on November 28. Advent is therefore never exactly four weeks long; it runs between 22 and 28 days.

Which direction you move around the wreath does not matter liturgically. Most families go clockwise, and many place the pink candle so that it is lit third without having to cross the wreath. If you have children, let one of them choose the direction on the first Sunday and keep it.

What does each Advent candle mean?

Each Advent candle stands for one theme of waiting for Christmas. The most common modern set, used widely in American Protestant churches and in many Catholic parishes, is hope, peace, joy and love, lit in that order. An older set names the candles after figures in the Christmas story: the prophets, Bethlehem, the shepherds and the angels.

The names are a teaching device, not a rule. The Church of England’s lectionary, for example, ties the four Sundays to the hope of God’s people, the prophets, John the Baptist and Mary. If your church uses a different set, follow your church; if you keep Advent at home without a church, choose the set that means something in your household and write the four words on a card beside the wreath.

Why is one Advent candle pink?

One Advent candle is pink because the third Sunday of Advent, Gaudete Sunday, has its own liturgical color: rose. Gaudete is Latin for “rejoice”, the first word of that Sunday’s entrance antiphon, taken from Philippians 4:4. Advent was historically a season of fasting and penance, like a shorter Lent, and the rose Sunday marks the halfway point where the mood lightens because Christmas is close.

The same thing happens in Lent: the fourth Sunday of Lent, Laetare Sunday, is also rose. Priests in churches that keep the custom wear rose vestments on both days, which is why the pink candle is not a decorative choice but a calendar marker. If you use four blue or four red candles, the third Sunday simply has no separate color.

What is the white candle in the middle of the Advent wreath?

The white candle in the middle of an Advent wreath is the Christ candle. It is lit on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, after all four Advent candles, to mark the beginning of the Christmas season. White is the traditional festal color of the Western church for Christmas and Easter.

Not every church uses it. Some leave it out so it is not confused with the Easter candle, and the original nineteenth-century wreath had no center candle at all. If you add one, many families keep lighting it with the others through the twelve days of Christmas, until Epiphany on January 6.

Advent candle colors by church: Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist and more

Advent candle colors depend on the church: Catholics usually use three purple and one rose, Lutherans often four blue, Methodists either purple or blue with or without a pink, many British and German households four red, and Orthodox families six colors. Here is the overview.

If you are buying candles for a church, ask the altar guild before you buy. If you are buying for home, the honest rule is to match the church you belong to, or to choose the colors you find beautiful if you belong to none.

Purple or blue Advent candles: which is right?

Both purple and blue are right; they express two different readings of Advent. Purple is the older Western color for seasons of penance, which is why Advent and Lent share it. Blue separates Advent from Lent and stresses hopeful waiting instead of repentance. The shade is often called Sarum blue and traced to the medieval use of Salisbury Cathedral in England, although historians point out that medieval color customs were far less uniform than that label suggests.

A practical note: in candlelight, deep purple and dark blue look almost identical, and a dark navy candle can read as black in photos. If you choose blue, a medium or royal blue keeps the wreath looking festive.

Where does the Advent wreath come from?

The Advent wreath as we know it comes from Hamburg, Germany, in 1839. Johann Hinrich Wichern, a Lutheran pastor who ran a home for poor boys called the Rauhes Haus, mounted candles on an old cartwheel so the children could count the days to Christmas: 24 small red candles for the weekdays and four large white ones for the Sundays. Earlier evergreen and candle customs existed among German Lutherans, but the counting ring was his.

Over the following decades the wheel shrank to a wreath and the 24 candles to four. German Catholics adopted it in the 1920s, and it reached North America in the 1930s. The purple and rose colors came later, when churches matched the candles to the liturgical vestments.

When do you light the Advent candles?

You light the Advent candles on each Sunday of Advent, traditionally at the main family meal or at an evening prayer, starting on the first Sunday of Advent: November 29 in 2026. Many families relight the week’s candles every evening at dinner, not just on Sundays, which is the closest thing to Wichern’s original daily ring.

Some families light the new candle on Saturday evening instead, following the old church custom that a Sunday begins at sundown the evening before. Either is fine. What matters is the rhythm: same time, same place, one short reading or a minute of quiet, then the candles are put out before anyone leaves the room.

How to make an Advent wreath at home

A row of holders is not a lesser wreath. Many households, especially those with cats, small children or no table space, set four tapers on a tray or a windowsill. You keep the colors and the order and lose the drying greenery, which is the most flammable part.

Why does the first Advent candle burn down faster?

The first Advent candle burns down faster because it is lit every week: four Sundays for the first candle, three for the second, two for the pink one and one for the last. By Christmas Eve the wreath looks like a staircase. If you also relight the candles every evening, the difference becomes dramatic.

Can you use other colors for Advent candles?

Yes, you can use other colors for Advent candles. Four red candles are the most common alternative in Britain, Germany and Scandinavia, all-white wreaths are popular in minimalist and Scandinavian homes, and natural beeswax candles in their own honey color are a quiet option. No church law governs a wreath at home.

If you follow a candle-color system from folk magic, you may know purple as the color of spiritual focus and pink as friendship and gentle love. That is a separate tradition with separate meanings, and it is fine to notice the overlap, but the Advent colors come from the church calendar, not from candle magic. Our guide to candle color meanings covers the folk system on its own terms.

Can you light Advent candles if you are not religious?

You can light Advent candles if you are not religious; many families do, as a way to count the darkening weeks to the winter solstice and Christmas. The wreath itself is a Christian custom, so it is respectful to know what it means even if your household reads it differently, for example as four weeks of hope, peace, joy and love without a theological frame.

Some pagan households light a separate solstice wreath with green, red, gold and white candles leading up to December 21. That is a modern custom, not an ancient one, and it works best when it is presented honestly as its own thing rather than as the “original” Advent wreath, which it is not. Our winter solstice rituals and how to celebrate Yule cover that side of the season.

Quiz: which Advent setup fits your home?

Voices from practice

We do not publish invented testimonials. These are patterns that recur in public parish newsletters, family blogs and forum threads about Advent at home, given without names.

The most common report is that the ritual survives only if it is short: one candle, one sentence, dinner. Families who planned long readings describe giving up by the second week. A second theme is children arguing over who lights the candle, solved in many homes by a rota written on the calendar. A third is the staircase problem described above, with people surprised on the fourth Sunday that the first candle is nearly gone.

A recurring disagreement is about color: converts and people who moved between churches often describe a small shock at finding blue or red wreaths where they expected purple. Clergy responding in those threads usually say the same thing: the colors serve the season, not the other way round.

What we don’t promise

Practically: how to work with this

Frequently asked questions

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Sources & further reading

Updated October 20, 2026. Related reading: beeswax vs paraffin candles · the Twelve Nights · ritual candles · candle holders