Advent Box

The smell of a Christmas tree, the taste of gingerbread cookies, the joy of being with loved ones, these are some thoughts that often come to mind when thinking about the Christmas season.  Like most parents, before I ever had kids, I had thought about the traditions I'd want our family to have.  We generally pass on those traditions from our family of origin that meant the most to us.  I too enjoy the scents and tastes that are associated with Christmas but I wanted to be intentional when it came to thinking about how to celebrate Christmas with my own children.  I knew I didn't want to focus on Santa but I wasn't sure exactly what I would do to keep the focus on Christ.  After I had my first child, I began thinking earnestly about how to celebrate Jesus' birth without getting wrapped up in the commercialism of our culture.  A friend introduced me to a book called Christmas Out of the Advent Box: Reclaiming Christmas for Fun, Faith and Family.

That book gave me great direction toward establishing traditions that instruct the hearts of my children in what Christmas is about.  Since then I've collected other books, compiled ideas from each of them, and have come up with our family's Christmas traditions.  "Many of the special days that could be spiritual anchors in your children's lives and hearts have had the spiritual content either secularized or commercialized right out of them.  When you add the spiritual content back in, and take it further by showing the meaning, you are injecting spiritual life into those special times...Holidays were God's idea.  He created several for the Jews who apparently liked the idea so much that they created others.  These were never simply recreational days as our holidays have become; they were first and foremost educational.  Christianity has followed the same pattern in creating holidays around key biblical events.  Christmas and Easter have no biblical mandate, but they are patterned after God's use of holidays to commemorate His actions in history and in our lives.  God is never opposed to traditions except when they become empty observances that serve no purpose for Him or require adherence to man-made rules over God's requirements." (Heartfelt Discipline: The Gentle Art of Training and Guiding Your Child)

My goal is to use the Advent season to point my kids to Christ, teach them the gospel and about the hope we have in our Savior.  Instead of just focusing on his birth, we talk about the prophecies preceeding his birth, his life, death and resurrection.  As John Donne put it "Christmas Day and his Good Friday are but the evening and the morning of one and the same day.  Christmas only points forward to Good Friday and Easter.  It can have no meaning apart from that, where the Son of God displayed his glory by his death." 

One of the main ways we do that in our house is with our Advent Box.

  Each day the children open a door on the Advent box and inside they find an object.  The object represents something related to what we are learning about Jesus and/or an activity we are doing that day.  In addition, I have selected a number of bible passages including prophecies about Christ's birth, the story surrounding his birth, some about his life, death, and resurrection as well as verses regarding his second Advent.  We discuss the meaning of the object and read and discuss the selected passage for that day.  Most days during Advent there is some activity, craft or story we are reading and I try to incorporate that into what we are learning.  There are activities that we do every year such as baking cookies, going to our town's Christmas parade, going through a live nativity, etc.  For the days that we are doing a specific activity, I incorporate a scripture passage that relates to it.  For baking cookies I might use the passages about Jesus being the bread of life or God's words being sweet and we'll talk about the story of Ruth.  For attending a parade, I use the passages about Jesus' second advent like 1 Thess. 4:14-18 (because of the school bands in the parade, I put a little trumpet in the box).  Many of the small objects are little ornaments so as the month goes on, the kids put their little ornament on their own tree in their room.

Day number one has a little scroll inside the door.  This represents the old testament and we will read about the promise of redemption in Gen. 3:15.

This little bow reprsents that we will be wrapping presents together that day.  We will read John 3:16 and talk about the gift of eternal life through Jesus our Lord.

This little angel ornament represents the angel coming to Mary to announce that she will be with child.  We'll read from Luke 1:26-38

In case anyone is wondering, what do we do about Santa?  He can't be avoided because I've tried that:) Actually, I do have a book I read on St. Nicholas day that talks about the real Santa.  This year we are going to be "Saint Nick's" ourselves as we plan to put items in stockings for the homeless.  Other than that, when they've asked about him, I've told them he's a character in a story and in books.  I tell them our family prefers not to celebrate Santa the way most people do and that we prefer to focus on Jesus's birth.  Last year, a child in the neighborhood asked Ethan what Santa brought him for Christmas.  Ethan said, "We don't celebrate Santa, we celebrate Jesus." So far, no parent has put a contract out on me for anything my kids have said:)

While the Advent Box is a huge part of our traditions, I like to add new things to make things interesting.  In January of this year, we met as a family to talk about what we would do this year to give back to God.  I got an idea from something I read recently to instead incorporate the idea of giving back to God at Christmas time.  So this year on Christmas Eve we will pretend we are wisemen searching for Jesus and will present him 3 gifts: a gift of service to someone in our family, a gift to him of something we want to grow and change in our spiritual walk, and a gift to some ministry.

If I am organized enough this Advent Season, I'll try to post more of the scriptures we are reading each day.

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