The Colors of Waiting: Rethinking the Colors of Christmas

Walk into almost any store in December (or even November), and you’re greeted by an unmistakable palette: red and green everywhere. There’s that Christmas parasite we call mistletoe, causing its usual round of awkward social encounters, along with ornaments, wrapping paper, sweaters, and signage—all of it decked out in brilliant reds and greens. Christmas, we assume, simply is red and green. These colors feel timeless, natural, even inevitable.

But what if red and green aren’t quite as original as we think?

What if the church’s oldest instincts around Christmas—and especially Advent—were shaped by a different set of colors altogether? And what if recovering those colors might help us recover something of the season’s deeper theological meaning?

This isn’t an argument against red and green. They’re beautiful, beloved, and here to stay. Rather, it’s an invitation to notice that blue (or purple) and pink have a much older and more explicitly theological relationship to the season of Advent and the mystery of Christmas—and that embracing them might help us practice a more patient, hopeful, and honest waiting.

The Liturgical Roots: Blue, Violet, and Rose

In the life of the church, colors have never been merely decorative. They teach. They shape imagination. They quietly signal what kind of time we are in. This was especially important throughout most of the church's historical contexts, where a majority of Christians who gathered to worship God were illiterate. Tools like stained glass, iconography, and liturgical colors dominated the imaginative places now occupied by words. 

From at least the medieval period, Advent was understood as a season of preparation and restraint, not celebration. It carried a tone similar to Lent—not identical, but related. The colors associated with Advent reflected this posture.

• Violet or deep blue marked the season of waiting, longing, and watchfulness.

• On the Third Sunday of Advent, known as Gaudete Sunday (“Rejoice!”), the mood shifted slightly. The church allowed itself a breath of joy.

• That shift was marked visually by rose (pink)—a lightening of violet, not a replacement of it.

Pink, then, was never meant to be cute or whimsical. It was theological. It proclaimed that joy does not cancel waiting but interrupts it. Hope breaks in before fulfillment arrives.

In some regions—most notably medieval England’s Sarum Rite—blue was used consistently for Advent, often with Marian associations. Blue evoked heaven, promise, expectation, and faithful longing. In many Protestant and ecumenical traditions today, blue has been recovered precisely to distinguish Advent from Lent and to emphasize hope rather than penitence alone.

Seen this way, blue and pink are not late additions or trendy alternatives. They are among the church’s earliest visual languages for this season.

So Where Did Red and Green Come From?

Red and green have a real history—but it’s largely folk, cultural, and later commercial, rather than liturgical.

Before the dawn of Christendom, people across Europe marked the winter solstice with greenery. Evergreens—holly, ivy, fir—symbolized life that endured even in the depths of winter. Bright red berries stood out against snow and darkness. These elements were carried into homes as signs of hope, protection, and continuity.

As Christianity spread, these practices were not erased. They were received and reinterpreted, as Christianity has often done. Holly, for example, came to be associated with Christ’s crown of thorns; red berries with blood; evergreen leaves with eternal life.

None of this is alarming or inappropriate. It reflects how human cultures use the material world to make meaning. Red and green were familiar, beautiful, and symbolically flexible. Over time, they became part of how people felt Christmas, even if they were not part of how the church lit Christmas.

What’s important to notice is that red and green colors belonged primarily to the home and the village, not the sanctuary.

Enter Coca-Cola

If ancient folk tradition planted the seeds, 20th-century advertising made them dominant.

In the 1930s, Coca-Cola commissioned illustrator Haddon Sundblom to create a series of Christmas advertisements featuring Santa Claus. His Santa—jolly, warm, human, dressed in bright red—captured the public imagination. These images were enormously influential, circulating widely in magazines, storefronts, and billboards.

Coca-Cola didn’t invent red and green, but it standardized and globalized them. What had once been one palette among many became the palette of Christmas.

Again, this doesn’t make red and green bad or wrong. It simply means that what we often assume to be ancient and theological is, in fact, relatively modern and commercial.

Christmas vs. Advent: A Crucial Distinction

Part of the confusion comes from collapsing Advent and Christmas into a single emotional experience.

Liturgically speaking:

• Advent is about waiting, longing, and hope

• Christmas is about incarnation and hope fulfilled.

The traditional color for Christmas itself is not red or green, but white and gold—light, glory, revelation.

When red and green dominate all of December, Advent gets swallowed up by Christmas before Christmas actually arrives. Blue and pink resist that rush. They slow us down. They insist that joy has a different texture when it is born from patience rather than immediacy.

Why This Matters

Color shapes posture.

Blue invites us into hopeful longing—not optimism, but trust formed in waiting.
Pink reminds us that joy is a gift, not a demand, and that it arrives before everything is resolved.
Together, they tell the truth that God comes not when we are ready, but while we are still waiting.

In a culture defined by social acceleration and dynamic stabilization—a culture that struggles to wait, that wants celebration without preparation and joy without depth—these colors quietly proclaim a counter-story.

A Both/And Invitation

None of this means we need to purge red and green from our lives or sanctuaries. They belong to Christmas’s rich cultural tapestry, and they still speak meaningfully to many people.

But perhaps we can expand our imagination.

Perhaps we can let blue and pink do some theological work again—especially in Advent.
Perhaps our wreaths, banners, and candles can help teach us how to wait.
Perhaps color itself can remind us that God’s coming is not rushed, marketed, or manufactured—but received.

Red and green will still be there when Christmas arrives.

But until then, blue and pink might help us remember what kind of season this really is.