This Sunday marks a very important feast in the church year, as well as closing the church Year B. We take down the green hangings which have been up so long in the Season After Pentecost. Now is a good time to get those cleaned and steamed. Next Sunday we will find ourselves in Advent I, the birthday of the church. Christ the King, sometimes called Feast of the Reign of Christ in some parishes, is a feast for extra care in preparation of the altar and decorations. The best white set of vestments and hangings are brought out, touches of gold or silver are appropriate, the brass should gleam, and white flowers are particularly lovely. Next Sunday will mark a great change as the altar once again becomes subdued, flowers are put aside until Christmas Eve. In some parishes boxwood or plain evergreens might be seen sparingly. The Advent wreath becomes a focal point. Some parishes will use a “Christ Candle” of white in the center of the Advent wreath of three purple and one rose candle. This white candle will be lit on Christmas Eve at midnight services.
Some churches in our diocese have a cross bearing the Christus Rex in their sanctuaries. Christ Church in Westerly has a large one in the side chapel. Some church supply catalogues sell the figure alone or on a cross in several sizes and ready to be mounted on the wall.
The time for preparation begins for Altar Guilds all over the world: ordering candles and bobeches, writing and mailing the annual Flower Memorials letter, checking on supplies of wine and bread, placing orders at local nurseries and flower shops, polishing brass and silver, pressing the best linens, ordering incense, polishing the thurible, tidying sacristies for the busy days to come, and the many other little services performed by faithful hands year in and year out as the great Feast of the Nativity approaches. The sweet-smelling quiet of the sacristy is a wonderful place to be at this time of year.
Hard to believe but the season after Pentecost is fast drawing to an end and already it is time to get your order in for Advent candles and to hunt up the Advent candle ring. If you use a fresh green wreath from the florist, most shops appreciate an order placed two weeks before to guarantee you will get just what you need. The Farmer’s Daughter (Kingston) and Schartner’s Farms (Exeter)make up a beautiful fresh green wreath to order if you drop off your ring. With a little green wire you can purchase a fresh ring to fit and wire it to your frame yourself. 
It has been a busy month going through boxes of redundant and unused vestments and linens which have arrived from other churches for relocating. It is like Christmas when these things appear in my office. I have quite a number of chalice pall inserts in various sizes and a good deal of linen remnants in various lengths. If your altar guild would like to make a new chalice pall, I am able to send you the insert (either cardboard, plexiglass or metal) and enough linen with an iron-on transfer and making directions to make a pall. They are really not very hard to do. (
the wane. Those electrified candles alas, aren’t quite the same thing! Still a staple in most Episcopal churches are kneelers in a hassock style, or pull-down hard kneelers on a wooden frame.
flower of Rhode Island.
A simple prie-dieu offered in a style still very affordable and obtainable through most church furnishing catalogues. The kneeler would look well in needlepoint.
I am not sure just WHO decided maniples were too much trouble and not required these days. I might have a bone to pick with this individual as I think maniples are quite beautiful, and lend an elegant and finished touch to the complete traditional ecclesiastical vestment ensemble. Maniples were once a favorite field for exquisite embroidery. In the diagram below the maniple is the second item to be laid down, vertical on top of the chasuble to form the “I” of the sacred monogram I.H.S. Then comes the stole with the ends forming the vertical bars of the “H” and finally the girdle or cincture coiled into the “S”. A snowy alb is laid down on top of this (front facing downward with buttons undone), and finally an amice is laid on top, open and flat with the two long strings crossed diagonally over the top. 
