Adventures in Advent | Preparing for Christmas

Last year about this time my wife and I sat down with our oldest children and ask the question “What would make Christmas special this year?” I wondered if they would start listing off expensive gift ideas like iPhones, maybe the latest game system, or designer clothes, but that wasn’t their response at all.  Their response was unanimous, “Advent!”

In Christian circles, “Advent” is known as the season of preparation for Christmas and usually begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas. The length of the Advent season depends on which day of the week Christmas falls on. A traditional advent season includes daily scripture readings related to the hope of the coming Messiah as well as the nativity itself.  Many families and churches include the weekly lighting of candles (one per week) symbolizing Hope, Peace, Joy, Love and finally Christ Himself who is the light of the world!  Our family, advent has always included daily activities (mostly focusing on the 24 days leading up to Christmas) and we like to create a calendar that includes both the scripture readings and some simple family holiday fun.

We know that some of you are going to quit before you start because 24 days may seem overwhelming or perhaps your schedule (or family life situation) might not permit you to do that much.  Our suggestion then is to simply start smaller! For instance, after previewing our families activities for the month of November and December this year we saw that 24 was going to be too much, but because we value the experience and didn’t want to lose the tradition to business, we decided just to scale it down a bit.  From there we came up with the idea of preparing our family for Christmas by creating 12 Days of Christmas.  Our goal was to create 12 very meaningful days throughout November and December where we could spend time as a family and prepare our hearts for Christmas.  Our goal on each of our 12 days is to do 2-4 fun activities so that we could share in things that would be fun for every age in our home (a challenge for a family with children raging 1 – 16 years old).  We’ve already accomplished 3 days of our 12 and it has been hit.  We’ve had a lot of fun and it is really warming us up to what the Christmas season is all about!

If you have interest in creating an advent experience or a simple 12 Days of Christmas plan for your family here now are a few ideas and suggestions:

We begin our advent planning by placing on the calendar all of the big activities we will attend that are related to the school, the church, extended family gatherings, and even community events. From there, we place all of the other big moments we want to experience with the kids like our annual trek to the mall visit Santa Clause.  From there we add in other fun ideas like going to see a Christmas movie, caroling at the nursing homes, or even ice skating.  Next, we fill in all of the other dates with smaller special activities that we will mostly do at home such as; a candy cane hunt, make hot cocoa and read a Christmas book, act out the Christmas story, and bake a Happy Birthday Jesus Cake.

The final step in our advent preparation is to transfer the calendar and our chosen scripture reading onto small slips of paper which we like to place inside of a festive advent system. Our system for delivering advent activities to our children has changed form many times over the years but one of our most recent systems included 25 small stockings all hung in a row.  We simply tacked a long piece of sparkling twine between one of our larger door frames and clothes pined the stockings to it.  Use our idea if you like but I’m sure Pintrest can help you come up with something even better.

We value preparing our family for Christmas and when we have put our minds to it Tami and I have always been able to create a fun, yet flexible, advent plan for our family that doesn’t cost a lot, but is rich with love and joy.  We know you can too!

Below is list of advent activities and ideas.  Feel free to share your ideas as well.  We are always looking for ideas to use in our home and that we can share with our readers!

Click Here to find a list of Advent scripture readings!

Hair Family Advent Ideas: (in no particular order)
Drive around and see the lights
Christmas Pancakes (using cookie cutters)
Perform Christmas songs at the nursing home
Paper cut-out snowflakes
Enjoy a cup of hot cocoa and read a new Christmas book
Pop popcorn and enjoy a new (or old) Christmas movie
Christmas “MadLibs”
Decorate the house for Christmas
Play Christmas Bingo
Go ice-skating
Candy cane hunt
Bake and decorate Christmas cookies
Go see a LIVE nativity
Play Christmas Charades
Drink cider and look at past Christmas photos
Visit Santa at the mall
1$ store gift exchange (draw name of siblings from a Santa hat)
Take a holiday treat to another family
Christmas coloring pages
Go see a Christmas movie
Rice Krispies treat train (Kellogg’s usually features this in parenting & kid’s magazines)
Make ginger bread houses (with a kit or with gram crackers and milk cartons)
Christmas Karaoke
Bake and decorate a “Happy Birthday” Jesus cake
Attend the Christmas Eve Service at church
Go to the Jingle Jam Family Christmas Show (Dec 13th!  Shows at 4:30 and 6:30)

Have a Merry Christmas and don’t forget to share your ideas with all of us below!

“Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign:  The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel (which means ‘God is with us’)”

~ Isaiah 7:14 ~