Advent wreaths started out as farm equipment

The fields are turned over. Corn rests in the cribs. We're waiting for winter's first, big snowfall.

Hardly the time to think about tractor wheels, animals pastured in fields and new plants.

Yet it's hard to escape the farm symbols of Advent.

First and foremost of these is the Advent wreath. The first Advent wreaths were actually wheels. Northern Europe is a hard place in winter. Nothing grows; the days are short and cold. A few centuries ago, people there feared that winter would never end and the sun would never return from its sojourn south. So farmers took wheels off their now-useless farm carts, decorated them with branches, ribbons and candles to symbolize the sun and the longed-for return of the growing season. They hung their wheels in their houses, hoping to bring about the return of the spring.

By the 16th century, German Lutherans adopted this custom, filled it with Christian symbolism, and called the wheel an Advents-kranz (Advent crown or wreath).

The circle of that Advent wreath -- representing Christ's eternal victory over the cold and dark of death as well as God's all encircling love -- also symbolizes the vigilance of shepherds. Here we see a second farm image of Advent.

In the Middle East, especially during winter, shepherds would gather their flocks into a communal sheep pen -- a sheepfold -- at night. The sheepfold might not always have been circular, but it still encircled the sheep, keeping them safe against the dangers of the night. Often, the shepherd would sleep across the entrance to that sheepfold to protect his flock from thieves and hungry wolves.

In our liturgical readings, we've been hearing a lot about shepherds. Last Sunday, the feast of Christ the King, we heard Psalm 23 ("The Lord is my shepherd"), an ancient promise that God would shepherd his people (Ez 34:11-12, 15-17). Following that was an interpretation that presented the final judgment as a separation of sheep from goats (Mt. 25:31-46).

This Sunday, as Advent begins, the responsorial psalm asks the "shepherd of Israel" to come down as savior.

On the second Sunday of Advent, the first reading will speak of the Lord "feeding his flocks and gathering the lambs in his arms" (Is 40:11).

The third Sunday of Advent brings David, speaking of his days as a shepherd that ended when he was called to "be commander of my people Israel" (2Sm 7).

And, of course, at Midnight Mass, the reading will speak of shepherds tending flocks in the fields at night. (Lk 2:8-14).

Why all these farm symbols during Advent?

First, the shepherd is one of the oldest titles given to Jesus. Images of the Good Shepherd, usually a beardless, young man, were some of the earliest painted of Christ. They have been found in Roman catacombs dating to the fourth century. And they are not meant to remind us of quiet, green fields -- but of a great protector-king.

In the ancient Middle East, flocks of sheep were so crucial to the economy that many leaders were called shepherd kings. For ancient Israel, the ideal shepherd-king was God. Any king chosen to lead Israel had to be a shepherd the way God was a shepherd: a leader, provider, protector. Referring to Psalm 23, Scripture scholar Fr. Richard Clifford, SJ, explains that "the psalmist is so confident of the divine shepherd's leadership as to trust even when the path leads through dangerous mountain passes."

This image of divine care in the darkest times, like the dead of winter, is one that Jesus envisioned when he called himself the "Good Shepherd." Pope John Paul II says Jesus went even further, though, in linking himself to the divine image of shepherd. Jesus, the pope said, "introduces a completely new element: the shepherd is the one who lays down his life for his sheep (Jn 10:11-18)."

Shepherding to the point of death presents a challenge to death. This is where we can begin to understand the message of the farm images of Advent. We can see the message in that image of a shepherd, lying out on a cold night, keeping the wolf from the sheepfold's gate. We can also see it in the candles of the Advent wreath, giving off bright light as they burn slowly down. We can see it in a wheel of evergreens in the face of winter. We can also hear it in another reading used for Advent -- one represented in the familiar Jesse trees -- where a new shoot rises up for the old stump of David's line (Jer 33:15).

Plants don't bloom in winter. Tractor wheels don't become light fixtures. People don't sleep in the cold because of a few sheep.

And yet we are entering Advent. "Already the final age of the world is with us and the renewal of the world is irrevocably under way," Vatican II reminds us in its document on the church (Lumen Gentium, no. 48).

That is what farm symbols in winter remind us.