Walmart doesn’t sell Christmas road maps. Can you imagine the flurry of customers to grab a copy of the Christmas best-practice guide hot off the press? I might be first in line, that is, unless it required parking lot campouts like Black Friday.
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What do you want your Christmas to look like this year?
Having a clear vision and writing concrete steps toward a goal is the best way to make progress. Your holiday season can be what you make it to be. Whether you delight in a sophisticated lighting display, arrange color-coordinated wrapped gifts beneath your tree, or prefer a humble celebration, you can make it happen by making a clear and doable plan.
Navigate the holidays by making your own Christmas road map, an advent calendar.
Advent calendars are an age-old method of celebrating Christmas day by day that you can modify to design a personalized holiday within your family’s home. Your calendar can be simple, like this one, my pick for 2013, or you can get crafty and make your advent calendar the central element of your Christmas decor.
Around here, we like to keep Christmas simple and focused on Christ. My husband and I read about his birth, talk about the importance of Jesus, and intentionally center all of our family Christmas activities on Jesus and toward throwing him a birthday bash on Christmas day.
Use my family’s list of advent activities to inspire your own Christmas celebration!
- We talk about why we celebrate Christmas- What is it? WHO is it?
- Make a nativity. We laminated a free printable with paper dolls last year and Summer loved it!
- Sing carols.
- Read a Christ-centered children’s Christmas book like The Tale of Three Trees, my fave.
- Design and hand out invitations to Jesus’ birthday party.
- Bake “thank you” cupcakes for teachers with these scripture gift tags attached.
- Hold a family dance party rocking out to free K-Love Christmas radio online.
- Write and mail personalized Christmas cards.
- Order holiday peppermint mochas from Starbucks or make your own (for mom, that is) and talk about the star of Bethlehem. You knew I had a connection going there, right?
- Write letters to and pray for our missionary friends.
- Make cookies to share.
- Decorate the house with meaningful ornaments and explain the significance of each.
- Watch a family Christmas movie.
- Have a candlelit dinner with a simple meal and read the Christmas story in Matthew.
- Bust out the crayons! Color Christmas coloring pages and hang them on display.
- Listen to the Christmas story with a free online audio Bible.
- Read about how other cultures celebrate Christmas.
- Donate baby items to a children’s home and talk about baby Jesus.
- Make a list of things we’re thankful to God for.
- Take a family photo and write our list of blessings (from #19) around the frame in colorful permanent marker.
- Hang decor and balloons for Jesus’ birthday party, like this twig star from Happy Hooligans.
- Attend a nighttime Christmas church service a la Home Alone.
- Snuggle together at bedtime and read the Christmas story in Luke.
- Bake and decorate Jesus’ birthday cake
- Fast forward. Discuss the Easter story to emphasize why Christmas is so important.
Where does your Christmas roadmap lead? Which activities and traditions will you include this year? Get your creative juices flowing and make this an unforgettable Christmas for you and your loved ones
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This is the third post in the “C” is for Christ(mas) series I’m participating in with 4 other talented bloggers. Visit every day this week for unique ideas to keep Christ in focus this holiday and mark your calendar for Friday’s Christmas link-up where you can showcase any and all your holiday-inspired posts!
Check out the other posts in this series and come back tomorrow for more!
- Day one: 10 Christ-Centered Christmas Books for Kids
- Day two: How to Use Truth in the Tinsel
I think I pinned everything in this post, Jelli. Love it! Now I have some cute crafts to do with the kids AND some delicious recipes to try. I really like those Christmas coloring sheets. Thanks for sharing what you and your family are doing leading up to Christmas.
This is a great list! This year we have a ‘kindness calendar’ – we chose one person a day to do something kind for. My daughters are loving it so far.
I really like your suggestion to tie Easter in. I’ll be thinking about how to do that here. Thank you!
I love the idea of a kindness calendar. That’s a wonderful way to instill values into our kids. I was actually just thinking I may replicate the idea of an advent calendar to make a birthday month calendar of sorts for celebrating birthdays in our family. My husband has always been great about making my birthday a whole month-long celebration, so why not make it even more special with daily activities, right? Thank you for visiting today, Lisha.
I love these ideas! My family used to always have a cookie day where we would bake a bunch of different kinds of cookies and then go deliver them to neighbors and friends from church. It was a tradition I definitely want to continue. Thanks for sharing these ideas!
Christmas cookies are the best! My mom always baked and then did her neighborhood rounds with cookie and goodie plates too. There’s one woman at our church in particular (another US ex-pat) who I can count on for yummy cookie plates at Christmas services. Love. Happy to share more ideas with you, Chelsea. P.S. Your new gravatar looks great!
Thanks! I was all thanks to your help!
Loved your ideas, loved the printables & recipes, and just loved reading this simple way of keeping Christ the focus. 🙂 Thanks for sharing your ideas with us!
Thanks so much, Caroline! It’s been a pleasure coming up with unique and fun ways to share Christmas with my family. With 2 small children, it’s a challenge to find activities that they’ll learn from and we’ll all enjoy.
You are killin’ it with these posts! I think I’ve liked or pinned or commented on all your recent stuff. This one doesn’t disappoint either. Some really fantastic ideas. I’d be curious to see how other cultures celebrate Christmas, too. We always made it a point to sing Happy Birthday to Jesus growing up. Even though there is a lot of unwrapping of gifts, eating pies, and laughing with family, we take several minutes with everyone there to read the Christmas story in the Bible. It does get lost in the hustle, bustle, and anxiety of the holidays.
I love these ideas! I’m adding it to my “stuff for the baby” file, which is where I tuck away ideas for when he’s a bit older.
Bethany, you’re too kind! I really appreciate your positive feedback…it’s motivating to know readers appreciate what’s going up on my site. It’s great that your family reads the Christmas story at your yearly gathering. That’s something that was definitely missing at my house growing up and I think that even that simple 5 minute addition to the routine would’ve been a wonderful way to focus on Jesus rather than on the presents. Thank you so much for stopping by and taking the time to really make my day!
It’s Deonna from the Child at Heart blog! Thank you so much for linking up at the Merriest Blog Hop! I can’t wait to see all of your holiday ideas this month! This has some great ideas. When my son is older I would love to use some of these for an advent calendar. Great idea to keep things simple 🙂
I loved this post. Thanks so much for sharing all of your advent activity ideas. I love the focus on Christ AND the simplicity of it all. I’ve really been focusing on keeping things simple this year. I can easily get myself too worked up or stressed out over trying to squeeze everything in. This post was very helpful. I featured it for this week’s Merriest Blog Hop! You can check it out here: http://www.aromaofhim.com/2013/12/the-merriest-blog-hop-4-countdown-to.html
Hope we’ll see more of you this week!
Thank you so much for featuring the post, Alicia! I’d love to hear what you’re doing to keep Advent Jesus-focused and simple. We can all use more tips, right?! Have a wonderful Christmas season. Hope to see you around again soon!
Thank you so much for this! I feel like every pinterest link I click is for something I have to pay for! I am going to do the coloring pages and nativity paper dolls with my son. He is 2.5 and all about Santa and I’m going to use this last week to get focused on the real reason for the season!
That’s great that you found some take-home ideas to share Jesus with your son this Christmas. My daughter is about the same age as your son, and she really loves that laminated nativity set. Hope you and your family have an awesome holiday, Meagan. Hope to see you around again soon!
What a beautiful collection of ideas for a blessed Christmas! I love the twig stars. Children would be able to make them and decorate them simply, as you have, with raffia strands. How pretty to hang them in a window above a nativity set!
Thank you, Joyce. I actually didn’t make these twig stars but a blogger friend did. I later made some similar stars using popsicle sticks that my toddler painted white and glittered and we hanged them over the dining room table at our Jesus birthday party on the 25th. They’re still there, reminding us of God’s best gift ever and I love them! Happy you stopped by today!