December 1 (today!) marks the first Sunday of Advent. The Christian faith celebrates Advent — the four-plus weeks leading up to Christmas — as a time of preparing for and remembering the birth of Christ and, according to scripture, Jesus’s eventual return.

I’m so excited that this year, you can combine my dementia-friendly Advent services with the recently completed dementia-friendly Christmas hymns! My goal is to give you a turn-key solution to celebrate this important time of year with any seniors in your life who are living with Alzheimer’s or another dementia.

If you’d like to offer an Advent service at your senior care residence (or nudge the activities staff to do it), here’s all you need to do:

• Download my dementia-friendly Christmas sing-along hymns onto your computer; then transfer, if you like, to a listening device (iPhone, iPad, etc.) and use your preferred method to play them through a speaker. (Here’s more info on that.)
• Download my ready-to-use Christmas hymnal and make enough copies for everyone in your group.
• Download the appropriate Advent service:
  • Dec 1: Hope
  • Dec 8: Love
  • Dec 15: Joy
  • Dec 22: Peace

I recommend that you have Advent electric candles (three purple and one pink) for your worship table — but you could also use simple illustrations of candles, an Advent Wreath felt board, or some other visual method of noting the different weeks and candles of the season.

I’ll post more as the season progresses, and please let me know if you have any questions or comments. Until then,

P.S. I’ve had numerous people ask me about making a donation to this ministry. It is my joy to continue to offer all of these original resources for free, but I’ve recently added a donation button to the website for anyone who feels they would like to give a financial gift. Thank you!

Image by Susanne Jutzeler, suju-foto from Pixabay