This year we have the unique joy of celebrating the arrival of Christ with a 6-year-old and a 2-year-old. Every Christmas will be different, but this year, we have these ages and we want to really enjoy them and teach them where they are.
I don’t know how many of you celebrate Advent or how you celebrate Advent, but we like to take the weeks leading up to Christmas Day (traditionally 28 days, beginning the 4th Sunday before Christmas – December 2nd this year) to focus on the Story, and to focus on our family.
For years we’ve followed (loosely – our kids are little and we weren’t great with the habit) a Messianic-prophecy-style scripture reading plan using a Jesse Tree. This year, I’ve had the enormous privilege of working as a part of the SheReadsTruth team to prepare a scripture + devotional plan for the women and families of that community. (Please! Join us! It begins this Sunday and anyone who wants to is welcome to use the plan!) We’ve been working since mid-October, doing a lot of studying and learning and digging to put together a worshipful and meaningful advent plan that we ourselves look forward to following with our own families. (We’re thinking we’ll do the readings every evening after dinner together, and I might do the related personal devotionals on my own during the day.)
This year we also added this lovely Advent Calendar to our new routine and have been inspired to engage our kiddos in some fun, Christmasy activities each day along with the daily scripture readings.We wanted these things to be simple, not making us super busy, or costing much if any money.
Ryan and I sat down together earlier this week and came up with this plan for our family of four:
(bear in mind that Advent begins on December 2nd this year, so these numbers correlate to the day of Advent, not the day of the month…)
1. make paper snowflakes
2. puppy chow + hand write some christmas cards
3. pinecone bird feeders
4. act out the manger scene with nativity toys
5. charlie brown christmas
6. sleep under the christmas tree/in the living room
7. family christmas shopping
8. make a gingerbread house
9. groovy’s secret recipe chex mix
10. late-night, school-night walk downtown (with warm drinks!)
11. sock snowball fight
12.caroling + take a meal to someone who needs it
13. make peppermint play doh
14. go see elf at the downtown theatre
15. ice skating
16. hide + seek in the dark (with flashlights!)
17. bedtime sonic/jammie run!
18. christmas music dance party
19. opryland lights in nashville
20. kids’ choice!
21. special breakfast out + christmas lights drive with grandma (a long tradition)
22. kids party @ grandma’s, parents go to white christmas at franklin theatre
23. grandma tillie’s cookies, christmas eve service, stockings, etc.
24. christmas day!
Do y’all celebrate Advent? If so, how and what ages are your kiddos? I’d love more ideas! Are any of y’all planning to join us for the She Reads Truth Advent Plan?
“Come, Thou long expected Jesus
Born to set Thy people free;
From our fears and sins release us,
Let us find our rest in Thee.”
“Come Thou Long Expected Jesus”, words by Charles Wesley
Raechel, Thank you so much for sharing! My husband and I never celebrated Advent growing up, and now with our little 7 month old we would love to build this tradition into our family. Since she is little, we’re using this year as a learning year, so we will have ideas to use for next year.
I’m super excited for the #shereadstruth Advent plan for myself. The Thanksgiving plan has been enormously helpful this holiday season. Love you girls for writing it!
Lindsey
I’m glad you shared this! I’m always looking for fun activities for our Advent calendar. We’re in a strange, halfway world, since the Orthodox Church does a huge Nativity fast for the entire 40 days prior to Christmas Day. (American Orthodox break for Thanksgiving, though, since no meat on Turkey Day would be cruel. And some strict Orthodox still celebrate Christmas in January It’s all very weird sometimes.) There’s not really a stress on Advent, per se, and overall it’s a much smaller deal than Lent and Easter (Pascha). Seriously, Christmas is pretty chill for Orthodox. But we’re converts, and so we still do Advent–like I said, halfway world.
You should know, every year, when I put out my Christmas things, I dig out Dr. Grant’s book that I won in your contest all those years ago. :) A lot of what he has to say is kind of irrelevant to Orthodox–it just has a very recent western European focus, which is understandable, coming from a Reformed perspective–but I still love flipping through, getting ideas for daily Scriptures and the stories behind hymns and traditions. Some Orthodox churches will mix western carols and Advent hymns in their worship, but we haven’t been able to convince the Greeks yet. Sadly.
Oh, this year we’re going to attempt the Santa Train for one of our Advent family activities. (We’re with you, we do activities and readings each day instead of, say, candy.) Canadian Western Railroad does this big Santa train deal that runs through lots of towns/cities. It has antique train cars, and every kid who comes gets to visit with Santa. For free! It’s usually hella cold by the time he gets to Kankakee, so we haven’t attempted it with all the littles in the past. And I’m sleeping with the director of the planetarium, so we always have an in for the Christmas planetarium show. Mwahaha.
I shouldn’t say Dr. Grant’s book is “irrelevant.” It is SO relevant. It’s just really neat to read it NOW, as an Orthodox, and see how my perspective on things has evolved. I wish I could explain better. But since you and I are two butts with one mind, you might have an idea of what I mean. Love.
Nope, totally read you, other butt. Love that you’re enjoying the book and christmas/advent/cold wintertime. xoxo
We have a scratch off advent calendar-so fun and easy to make.
http://www.homeofthehalls.blogspot.com/2011/12/advent-project.html
I will be stopping by each day that mentions food. :-)
I am so excited for the She Reads Truth advent series! Thank you so much for being a part of studying and preparing such a meaningful season for us!! I love the activities you have come up with for your family! I hope you’ll do more posts about your journey through the advent season with your husband and children! :-)
This our 2nd year using an advent calendar and I *love* it. It gets me organized and makes us sit down and plan our month. I do get a few gifts for the days where an activity just won’t fit. This year the gifts are: Christmas jammies, a new puzzle, Christmas coloring book and new crayons and a new Christmas book. So, nothing too extravagant. Our activities include: Christmas cookies, making snowflakes (we did this on Monday and mod podged them and sprinkled them with glitter! So pretty!), Visit to Santa, Dollar store trip to buy for cousins, Lights on the boardwalk, Christmas party at Aunts, Sleepover at Nanas, Wrap Christmas gifts, Christmas caroling at nursing home, Gingerbread house, live nativity play…. I know I’m forgetting some. I always write them down and then decide what day they will happen because life happens! Our kiddos are almost 5 and 2 so we have similar ages…
Love some of your ideas! Can you share the recipe for the peppermint playdough? That sounds awesome!
Thank you so much for sharing this Molly! What fun! And the peppermint play dough – good question! I’ll see about sharing it with pictures when we do it!