Each year, our family prepares for Christmas by celebrating with Family Advent Nights. These are unique family gatherings that give a great opportunity for us to be together and celebrate Christmas together.
We start of the evening with a specific Advent scripture and a story, which I wrote about last week.
Following that, we move on to some more entertaining aspects of our evening together.
Each year, our typical habit is to do a Christmas themed craft together. However, sometimes, as this year, we substitute the crafts with games together.
I order the crafts usually from Familyman Ministries, but we’ve also purchased different craft activities from Oriental Trading Company. When we do this, we end up with a few extra of each craft, so our kids can use them for gifts for friends and family members.
With the ages of our kids, the craft time can take a while. My wife and I, and even our older kids are scrambling around the table, helping the younger kids with the parts they can’t do on their own. But it is tremendous fun together, and the crafts look good around the house or on the tree. One year, we did Christmas placemats, which the kids still use each year.
After the crafts are finished, we move on to a small snack time. We usually don’t make a big production of this, simply because we don’t want to sugar the kids up and then expect them to head to bed! Usually, my wife organizes this while I am reading the story. Our snacks range from caramel popcorn to brownies to cookies and more. One year, we had chocolate covered pretzels. Those were a big hit!
Also, we treat the kids to a glass of sparkling juice or cider. We break out the fancy stemware to make it a very special occasion. The kids have come to expect this each year, so it has become a permanent part of our Family Advent Night events.
Things are different each year as we celebrate. In this aspect of our tradition, I have tried very hard not to lock our family into any specific routine, instead choosing to create anticipation by doing a variety of different things together. The point of the evening is to celebrate Christ’s coming as a family. And we do that well.
I highly encourage you to spend some evenings together this year celebrating the birth of Jesus as a family. If you use some of the suggestions found here, great. If not, that’s great too. Just make it a priority to focus on the reason for celebrating with your family.
They will love it!
And you will too!
Be deliberate, Dad!
What easy and fun Christmas crafts have you done with your family to celebrate together? You can leave your thoughts in the comments by clicking here.