Tis the Season

I love Christmas for so many reasons, but since becoming a mama, the magnitude of this precious holiday has sunk in. I get to instill in my two precious girls a love for Jesus Christ, the little baby who came to this world, innocent and yet knowing what his cup held. And he would have come, even if it were only to save me. This is not new news, but awesome and amazing every time I think about it. Thank you, Jesus!


This year my girls are 2 and 4. Old enough to get involved! So, we have made a list of different activities that we are going to do this year. Some are service activities. We are going to make cookies and write a note to our grumpy postman. We have gone through the toys and picked several that are in hardly used (or never used) condition and are bringing them to the local Santa Shop, along with a few new toys that we picked out. We have already donated food items to a family in need, and will continue to pray for that family.

We are also doing the fun stuff. You guessed it - we'll be making Christmas cookies, decorating the tree making a paper chain, building gingerbread houses, watching all the Christmas movies on TV, reading the countless Christmas books that I collected from my years of teaching, writing Santa a letter, and getting our fill of hot chocolate and egg nog!


But this year, more than in years past, we are going to be making Jesus the main focus of our holiday. I will be working with my oldest daughter talking about what it means to celebrate Jesus' birthday. My friend Traci wrote about this a few days ago, and I loved the idea. We get gifts for his birthday, and He is the ultimate gift, but what can we give Him? What does Jesus want for his birthday? Then we'll make these our goals for 2012.

I am also using our Advent Box again this year, but adding a little twist to it. We will continue to open one box a day and place the ornament on the two little trees, but we will talk about what the ornament is and what it means, and then we're going to pray using the ornament as the prayer focus. Even if it's just a little snowflake, we'll thank God for the purity and cleansing that the snow brings. We have an entire tiny nativity that takes up about 12 days, so it will be fun explaining to the girls what each figure is and what it means!


The last thing that I'm super excited about will be our weekly family Advent dinners. My friend Emily does this every year, and I wanted to try it last year, but didn't. Each week we will set the table with my "fancy" Christmas dishes and enjoy a yummy meal by candlelight and treelight. Each week we'll light a new candle and read the Scriptures. The breakdown looks like this:
Week One: Luke 1:26-38 ~Gabriel tells Mary that she has been chosen to be the Messiah's mother~
Week Two: Luke 2:1-7 ~Jesus is born in a manger~
Week Three: Luke 2:8-20 ~The angels visit the shepherds and the shepherds visit Jesus~
Week Four: Matthew 2:1-12 ~The Wisemen visit Jesus bringing gifts~

On Christmas Eve our plan is to attend an early Christmas Eve service in the afternoon and then hunker down at home. We'll put on our new Christmas jammies that were delivered earlier that day by one of Santa's faithful elves (probably Buddy the Elf), eat potato soup and homemade bread, and then cuddle up with our hot chocolate to watch the Polar Express. We will read the whole Christmas story from Luke, which will be even more real to the girls since we'll have been talking about it all month, and then let the Sugar Plums dance in our heads!

Here's to an awesome CHRISTmas season. What are you up to?