advent 1.2

This afternoon I lit the candle that has been an implicit sort of Advent candle in my five years of marriage. On our crazy day-after-Thanksgiving shopping trip, my mom and I always visit a department store and always buy holiday candles there, inexpensive ones in glass jars with names like "mulled cider" and "winter berry." I go back and forth between preferring peppermint and cinnamon; this year I went for cinnamon, and this afternoon I trimmed the wick and lit it. Now the apartment is full of spice.

I will burn this candle when I am home all the way through Advent; by Christmas, it will be an empty jar with the faintest layer of brown wax.

How do we prepare ourselves? What exactly are we waiting for? What is the meaning of the empty jar?