Christmas should not eclipse Thanksgiving.You know, "Jingle Bells" playing in the supermarket when you're shopping for your turkey dinner?
Thanksgiving is worth celebrating, a time to pause and give thanks to the Lord. And in our household, we enjoy Thanksgiving Day tremendously.
But once the last Thanksgiving dish is washed, I don't waste any time heralding the Christmas season!
Today was Deck The Halls day at our home. The Christmas bins came out of storage. Garlands and lights went up everywhere. The boys got out all their holiday books and toys.
Traditionally, we have Christmas music playing all day, but I can't find any of our holiday CD's. One of the hazards of moving twice in 18 months, I think....
Ken and I snuggled on the couch this evening and looked through all of the Christmas cards and family photos we received last year.
We are looking forward to a meaningful advent season. I'd like to fill it up with old traditions, but also add a few new ones.
So, tell me, friends, what are your families' best Christmas traditions? And, especially, traditions that center your hearts and minds on Jesus Christ?
~~~
5 comments:
Hi Ken and Kim,
The tradition that I love most is on Christmas Eve we read the from our Bible, either the Christmas story from one of the Gospels or John 1. After that, we go around the room saying:
1)Something God has taught us over the year.
2)Something encouraging about the person sitting to our right.
OR
3)Something we are thankful to God for.
Over the years I think it has been something that has put the past years focus on what God has done and drawn us closer as a family. We willl miss Mike and Amanda this year but we are thinking about Skyping them and doing it with them over the internet! Cool huh?
Oh yeah, then we have candles that we light one at a time passing it from one candle to the next. The you can pray or sing. As the kids got older we have taken a considerable amount of time to pray.
Our fairly new tradition is going through The Christmas Adventure Book through Advent. We are doing it again this year and then trading this book with a friends book next year to keep the focus on Christ and learn a lot in the process.
Hello Schmidts!
We started a new tradition this year. I purchased a new magnetic nativity advent calendar online (I saw one just like it at the Pederson's home). At dinner each night we read our advent reading, put the new magnent on the board, and pray before our meal is served. I hope to add to this praying for the families of the Christmas cards we receive that day too!
Love,
The Dyers
Hi Kim and Ken!
I like the reference back to your wall of last year! How is it going this year! We have 3 pictures for our wall so far. We like to try to pray for those people as the cards come in too--some nights are easier than others! We also have an advent wreath and have done nightly readings or readings just on Sundays, but we light the candles every night at the table at dinnertime. I haven't found the advent wreath this year yet...oops!
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