Advent, Part 1

For years I have attempted to incorporate the celebration of Advent into our family's Christmas. Last year I even went so far as to buy the candles (3 purple, 1 rose and 1 white) and set them up on the dining room table. We just never lit them. I remember thinking about it on Sunday nights and kicking myself for forgetting. When I was a kid, Christmas meant visiting Santa to issue my list of "wants," dinner at my Grandma's on Christmas Eve and an flurry of present opening on Christmas morning. I intend for it to mean so much more to my own children, even though I'm sure that right now they would say that their favorite part of Christmas is the presents. I still haven't followed through on my yearly resolution to buy them less presents but that doesn't keep me from vowing it again this year.

So this year I finally got my Advent act together. Yesterday was the first Sunday of Advent, so I set up the candles, found a guide for the devotional readings and called the whole herd together. It took some doing to get them all collected in the dining room but I wasn't taking "No" for an answer! I even assigned Bible readings to the two 7 year olds. The big kids all wanted to be the one to light the candle (sorry, that's a grown-up job) and the little ones just wanted to pull them off the table. We talked about Hope (the first candle is for Hope or Prophecy, and I thought Prophecy might be a little too advanced a concept for them). We read in John about how Jesus is the light of the world, and we turned out the lights before we lit the candle as sort of a simple illustration. The whole thing lasted maybe 5 minutes. I don't know if it meant anything to anyone else, but I enjoyed it. I love the whole idea of preparing your heart and mind for Christmas by lighting the candles and reading about Christ's coming. I'm sure that as my kids grow older I can involve them more and more. Maybe next week we'll even sing a Christmas carol that goes along with the week's theme.

I'm also thinking about doing a Jesse tree this year, but I'm going to have to decide quickly since today is the first of December. A Jesse tree is a plain little twig tree that you use to hang ornaments that illustrate certain Bible truths that pertain to Christ and Christmas. I'm searching for some printables that the kids can just color in and cut out. That seems like a good way to combine crafts with spiritual training, doesn't it? I'm always looking for ways to multi-task. :-)