Two seasons wearing the same name. The Western Advent is four weeks of anticipation with candles and a children's calendar, penitential in theory and festive in practice. The Eastern Nativity Fast is forty days without meat, dairy or eggs, beginning 15 November, and the Ethiopian equivalent runs forty-three days. The result is that on 20 December an Orthodox household is eating lentils while a Western one is at its third office party. Advent wreaths are a nineteenth-century German Lutheran invention, adopted by Catholics later, which is a useful reminder that much of what feels ancient in domestic Christian practice is about a hundred and fifty years old. The commercial calendar has effectively eaten the Western version, and clergy complain about this annually with no discernible effect.