How we (I) plan on celebrating Christmas this year.

I have not veered off of the traditional Christmas plans, but I have realized that there are some particularly good opportunities that come with Christmas to introduce symbolism and history to young children, and I want to take advantage of that, and bring special meaning to Christmas, without doing a lot of extra work to make it fun. I want it to be fun for me, too!

So this year I have decided to add a Jesse Tree to our Christmas tradition, which means that we will set up our large tree, and also our small tree. The large tree with have our typical Christmas decorations, but the small will be simple, and each of the children will get an ornament to add to it each day for the 28 days prior to Christmas (starting the Saturday after Thanksgiving). I will make the ornaments with some foam board and printed ornaments I found on the internet, and each child will get a different symbol to put on the tree. Since I only have two children, this will be fairly simple, because there are lots of websites and I only need two different pictures for each day.

We have done advent since Nour was 2, lighting candles in the wreath and reading the Children’s Bible stories related to the birth of Jesus. I hope one day to actually have children’s books directly related to each candle, but that probably won’t be this year. Each Sunday we will light a new candle plus the older candles, and we will read the stories each day, building upon the previous story until we get to the story of the birth of Jesus and the Magi.

I’m excited to involve Alex more this year, he was so young last year that he didn’t take part. He’s getting old enough to sit for a story and place ornaments on the tree, and that should be very interesting to observe!

The last thing we are adding is a tradition that I have not celebrated before, but it is something that I hope to help separate Santa Claus from Jesus’ birth a little bit. We will be giving a small gift to each child on the feast of St. Nicholas (which is Dec. 6). I will tell the story of who St. Nicholas was, and why he is part of Christmas. I hope that this will help put Santa into perspective, and keep the kids from thinking that Santa is not “real.” He was a real saint, and he was a very generous person. I think generosity is a very good quality to teach children, and I think that it would be good to do some generous things on his feast day. One idea is to go out the day before and buy a bag of non-perishable groceries to donate at church for our food pantry the next day. This could be a very wonderful way of teaching children to do the same, since St. Nick gave money to the poor and needy.

I believe that one of the “gifts” that is typically given on St. Nicholas day is chocolate coins. These are already readily available at Christmastime because of Hanukkah, as well, and the typical way that the Dutch children receive these gifts is by putting out their shoes for Sinterklaus (sp?) to put gifts into. I think we would probably just put their shoes outside the bedroom door for them to find in the morning. I don’t know what other gifts I would be able to find that are small for this unique day, but I don’t want it to just be chocolate candy!

Finally, I don’t know yet if I will celebrate this tradition, but I’m thinking about it. My mom has done the “12 days of Christmas” in the past, and that would start Dec. 14th with Christmas as day 12. Another way of celebrating this is having Christmas day be day 1, and January 5th be the 12th day. January 6th is Epiphany on the Christian calendar, but the Orthodox Christmas (which is also the “Egyptian” Christmas) is celebrated on January 7th. This is the day that we take down our Christmas tree. I keep it up that long because of our Egyptian family, and it helps me to remember the date. I have not decided what to do about the 12 day gifts, but if I do end up doing 12 days, the gifts will be small and directly related to presents the children got for Christmas, or clothing. Last year, Nour got socks and small books for most days.

It’s fun to get creative with Christmas gifts and Christmas traditions, because there is so much to pick from. I don’t want to go overboard on decoration, but it is one time of year that there is a lot to talk about regarding the meaning of traditions, and I personally feel that my own children ought to understand the meaning of the things we do, rather than just doing them without understanding. It is part of living our faith and being able to give an explanation for our beliefs, rather than doing things robotically and not knowing why certain things are important.

Great ideas!! I love Christmas

Comment by momma November 12, 2009 @ 7:27 am

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