While some may think I am nuts, I decided to bring on the Christmas cheer quite early this year! We don't "celebrate" Halloween, although we have sometimes done ministry type stuff on October 31 on other years. So with the depressing isolation this fall that COVID and its related restrictions have brought to us this year, we felt focussing on our Saviour's birth would be a good way to deal with the psychologically hard stuff.
The first thing we did was to put up our Christmas tree the Sunday after Thanksgiving! I love the reminder that the evergreen tree gives of our eternal life, and the lights reminder that Jesus is the light of the world. The lit tree just gives the house a warm, cozy feeling as the season gets colder and the days shorter.
A number of years ago, I sewed up a bunch of small, felt, reusable stockings to use for the advent season. I've used them in various ways over the years. I usually put a treat for each child in each stocking. What the treat is varies from year to year, based on allergies,what is on sale or what is easiest to find when I finalyy get to buying them. I usually buy the treats during sales around Halloween since I need to put the stockings together before December 1. This years treats are Rockets and Starbursts, and I just filled them this morning!
Over the years I have upgraded the Advent set. I painted and decorated the clothespins that hold them on the line. I found scrapbook paper with the advent numbers printed on them, cut them out, then laminated them for durability. One of the first years, I created Christmas activity cards that I included in every one. We have included various Bible passages over the years to be read from in each stocking, to help us remember that Advent is about more than just treats.
We did not do the activity cards the last couple of years, but I think we should be able to manage them this year with the little girls being a biut older. And since I didn't want too much pressure, I did not put a card every day, which allows me a little flexibility if I need to juggle things around.
We have another tradition that we do every year as well--family Christmas ornaments! Every year we select and buy OR I hand make a Christmas ornament for each family member. We don't put all the ornaments on the tree every year (some are breakable-and so we put them up based on the factors each year), but the goal was to provide each child a set of decorations that they can take with them once they are grown and have their own homes and trees! Hopefully the decorations also bring back warm, family memories too...
The snowmen you see here in the blog, are decorations from Christmas 2018. I am currently tossing around ideas for this years ornaments--I love crafting so that's likely the direction we will go. Maybe I'll share with you later what and how I did!
Another tradition we've done some years, is Jesse Tree ornaments/readings. These ornaments and readings take you from creation to the birth of the Saviour over the advent season and are a great way to focus on the reason our Saviour came as a baby! The picture shows some of the decorations I made using felt--I based them off some prinable graphics I had found for reproducible resources.
Just wanted to share with you some of the things that I am or have been doing to prepare for the coming Advent and Christmas season. What things do you do? Do you have any traditions? Have you been inspired to try any of the things I mentioned above?
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