As a child growing up in Pittsburgh, Archbishop Bernard Hebda had concrete experiences of the Advent and Christmas seasons, and still recalls how they shaped his attitudes and practices of these holy seasons.

He took time to reminisce about his upbringing during a recent interview for the Rediscover: Hour on Relevant Radio 1330-AM. Two of his favorite family traditions were the Advent calendar, in which windows are opened daily to reveal Scripture passages or other messages about the birth of Jesus, and the Advent wreath, in which candles are lit during each of the four weeks of Advent as families gather around to pray, sing and talk about the coming of Jesus.

iStock/rorat

“Advent was always an important time for us,” said Archbishop Hebda, the oldest of four siblings. “Every year, we would get an Advent calendar. … And then, we (the four children) would always jockey to see who got to open up the window (on the calendar) to see what was the theme for that day in Advent. For a little boy, that was something that was exciting, and it was something that I looked forward to.”

But for him, it was more than just a fun activity. “It really does such a great job of conveying the sense of Advent, of waiting and expectation and hope,” he said. “It’s amazing how it was able to teach in that way.”

As he grew older, his parents, Bernard and Helen, taught him a new Advent and Christmas lesson. They tried to impress on their oldest son how generous God is in giving his Son to the world. They did so by asking him — and later, his younger siblings — to pick one item in his Christmas stocking to give away. At first, he was instructed to lay it in front of the manger scene at his parish church, Resurrection in Pittsburgh’s Brookline neighborhood. In later years, he would pick one item and give it to one of his younger siblings, who then were instructed to do likewise.

“It wasn’t supposed to be something you didn’t like,” he noted, stressing the importance of the concept of gift giving. “That’s one of the ways in which we prepare, is by trying to be Christlike in generosity.”

There were plenty of fun traditions along the way as well, drawing from his mother’s Irish traditions and his father’s Polish traditions. Bowing to the Polish side, the family celebrated Christmas on Christmas Eve, which featured a drive in their neighborhood and beyond to see the luminaria set up in people’s yards and on their sidewalks.

But first came the meal, which had an unusual start.

“As is typical in Polish households, you set the table and you send somebody out to wait for the first star, and that’s when you could start (eating),” he said. “And, I can tell you that growing up in Pittsburgh, you didn’t always see a star. Then, you just kind of pretend that you saw a star. … That waiting for a star was a wonderful way to finish Advent.”

Archbishop Hebda said his mother made lots of wonderful food for the Christmas Eve dinner, including some of her Irish favorites, but also Polish dishes like pierogi. After the meal came an annual adventure in the form of a mini road trip through parts of the city.

“My parents would pile us into the car and we would go out to a section of Pittsburgh where the families would put out the luminaria,” he recalled. “It was always a challenge because even though it’s not as cold and windy as it is in Minnesota, Pittsburgh is cold in its own right. Always, it seemed like on Christmas Eve the wind would blow, and people would be running out time and time again to light the luminaria.”

He said the annual drive through Pittsburgh “was always a big deal for us,” and the finishing point for the day was coming home to open gifts. As he grew older, he became an altar server, which meant that Christmas Eve ended with Midnight Mass. He said every altar server took part, with sometimes up to 50 or 60 servers for the Mass.

Perhaps, the most unusual tradition was the planting of what he called “St. Lucy’s wheat.” It was done on her feast day Dec. 13 to recognize this Italian saint, who was martyred in the fourth century during the persecution of Christians by the Roman Emperor Diocletian, and later was credited with the arrival of boats filled with wheat during a famine in Sicily in 1582.

“I didn’t know anything about wheat or anything about growing,” Archbishop Hebda said, “but always on the feast of St. Lucy, we would start to plant this wheat, and it would always come up (sprout) for Christmas.”

He said such hands-on traditions were valuable for him in learning about the waiting and anticipation of the Advent season, and he noted that Jesus likewise used concrete examples in his parables to teach his followers important points of the Gospel.

That’s why Archbishop Hebda believes simple practices are so good for families. He recommends that couples starting their own families establish Advent and Christmas traditions much like what he experienced in his own childhood. The simplicity of such activities is beautiful and instructive. Giving each child a specific role to play helps them engage even more, he said.

“I think, especially, the Advent wreath and the Advent calendar are two really easy ways” to experience the Advent season, he said. “I think what’s important is … to be able to create traditions for the family, so that when their son is the archbishop in some strange place 50 years from now, that he’s able to talk about the way his parents helped him to observe Advent.”