Advent Traditions

Happy Advent, all!

I love this time of year and am excited that we have more kids with whom we share traditions.  How do you spend this month?  We have a few traditions that are special to our family.  Some traditions come from my childhood or my husband's. Some we created with our adult kids when they were young. And we are making new traditions now!

New and Old Memories:

Last year was our first Christmas with the girls and I’d read some good tips about blending families and honoring traditions.  We asked the girls about any activities they could remember doing with their first family that we could repeat.  They remember ‘light lookin’ so that was easy.  They jump in with two feet to our activities and love being part of them.

Stories:

Tabitha’s Travels is one in a trio of books about kids spending the month before Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem.  They have adventures and meet Jesus.  We read this each evening. We tried Jotham’s Journey last year, but they weren’t ready to sit for that long.

Decorations:

We have a Christmas tree in the living room and the basement by our school area.  We have nativity scenes all over the house. My husband has a little Christmas village to which he adds every year. We have a new mistletoe bell in the entryway, so kisses and giggles are flying about.  I love the decorations, and we keep them up until the 6^th of January.

Christmas “Light Lookin’”:

This is a favorite every year, but now we live in a neighborhood with two separate streets that go all out.  Instead of driving, we bundle up, bring hot cocoa, and walk around to take in the sights. I truly love this time and we do it more than once. When we get to include neighbors and friends, all the better!

Movies:

We have a long list of movies we enjoy this month.  Top of the list are The Star, The First Noel (with Andy Griffith), and Why Do We Call It Christmas with Buck Denver.  We also enjoy While You Were Sleeping, The Santa Clause Movies, The Polar Express, Jim Carrey’s Grinch, and Noelle.

Advent Calendars:

My oldest daughter got me a great one a few years ago with drawers.  I put a strip of paper with a Bible verse in each. I used to add a Kiss to each, but now we do M&Ms or Skittles so there are enough for each little mouth.  We also have a paper chain with verses from our church this year, so we will see how to incorporate that into our routines.

Christmas Eve PJs:

Everyone gets to open one gift on Christmas Eve that just happens to be PJs. Then we all wake up wearing photo-ready pajamas for gift opening!  Pretty smart!

Santa Game:

We tell our children that Santa is a game families play to show love. It is not our place to tell any other child about the Santa game!  This is drilled in pretty firmly, let me tell you! 

We don’t play the game to the degree of saying Santa is real.  We want them to believe us in everything, so way back with our first two kids, we decided it would be a game born from the historical figure who gave gifts.  And play we do!  Stockings are stuffed and someone gets to be Santa on Christmas morning to hand out gifts from under the tree.

Crafts:

We make ornaments, Nativity games, graham cracker houses, and any other craft I can think of.

Quiet:

Along with all the activity, we protect quiet moments with no agenda. Time to snuggle, read books, listen to music, and talk is important all year round.  We discovered that it is imperative around holidays. This is a time for memories, some not so pleasant.  My adult children carry grief from losing loved ones this time of year. My young children carry grief from losing nearly everything and everyone they knew before us. Last year they also had some unexpected traumatic triggers.  Thankfully we had made room for everyone to feel what they needed to feel and process what came up in safety.  I feel even more prepared this year, though I’m probably not!

Those are the highlights. I would love to hear about your traditions!