Nathan and I were asked to help out with the Ward Christmas Party this year. We are in charge of the program. We were talking as a committee how we would like to work hard to bring Christ into the program. One day, my mom brought up a book that had been recommended to her. It was A Christ Centered Christmas by Emily Freeman. I had heard Emily talk at Time Out for Women and was impressed enough with her to try out the book and see if it gave any ideas I could use for the party. I looked it up and found out I could get it on my kindle. It was a quick read and I finished it in two days. It did have some good ideas for the program, but even more than that, it had some good ideas that I decided I wanted to use in my own home this year. It also got me excited for Christmas super early this year. I put up my decorations at the beginning of November. Usually I try to put them up the week of Thanksgiving, so the last thing we put up is our tree the weekend after Thanksgiving. This year, I'm loving having them up longer. I've decided that it's not skipping over Thanksgiving, it's getting in the mood for the holidays early. I've felt excited for Thanksgiving and Christmas all month.
Anyway, back to the book. It has a chapter on seven different nativity characters and what we can learn from them today. It also has a tradition that you can incorporate into your Christmas traditions that will help you remember what that character teaches us. When I read the book, I looked at the calendar and realized that we had seven Mondays until Christmas. I decided that we will take one of the characters each week and learn about them in FHE, then we will do the tradition some time that week.
The first character I chose was Joseph. I chose him because reading through his chapter reminded me so much of one of my favorite Christmas stories, The Last Straw. I've always wanted to do the tradition in that book, but it seemed like a lot of work. And a big mess. But I loved what the kids in that story learned from the tradition. So, two Mondays ago, we learned about Joseph. From Joseph we learn about service and one of the traditions they recommend is to have a jingle bell that gets passed from pillow to pillow in the house. If you find a jingle bell on your pillow, you get to do service for someone else, then leave the bell on their pillow. I didn't have huge hopes for this starting out. I always feel like stories are that, stories. Nothing ever works out like it's supposed to. Nathan was late getting home that night, so we started without him. We talked about Joseph, what we can learn from him, and the tradition. I didn't have a jingle bell, but I printed one out on the computer and told the kids I'd color it and leave it on a pillow. Nathan got home when we were having treats. The kids were so excited to tell him about the tradition and that he got to do service if he found a jingle bell on his pillow. We sent the kids to bed and I colored the jingle bell. Nathan suggested I laminate it, so we decided to wait another day. Zoey came flying into my bedroom the next morning looking all around. Apparently she had been in everyone's room looking for the jingle bell. I told her to keep watching for it. It was actually a few days later that it finally got started, but the kids have been doing great with it. We've decided to continue with the tradition clear until Christmas. And the attitude in our home has totally changed. It is just like the story. I'm not going to say that no one ever fights, but there is plenty of service going on. Even when people don't have the jingle bell. I'm LOVING it!!
The first character I chose was Joseph. I chose him because reading through his chapter reminded me so much of one of my favorite Christmas stories, The Last Straw. I've always wanted to do the tradition in that book, but it seemed like a lot of work. And a big mess. But I loved what the kids in that story learned from the tradition. So, two Mondays ago, we learned about Joseph. From Joseph we learn about service and one of the traditions they recommend is to have a jingle bell that gets passed from pillow to pillow in the house. If you find a jingle bell on your pillow, you get to do service for someone else, then leave the bell on their pillow. I didn't have huge hopes for this starting out. I always feel like stories are that, stories. Nothing ever works out like it's supposed to. Nathan was late getting home that night, so we started without him. We talked about Joseph, what we can learn from him, and the tradition. I didn't have a jingle bell, but I printed one out on the computer and told the kids I'd color it and leave it on a pillow. Nathan got home when we were having treats. The kids were so excited to tell him about the tradition and that he got to do service if he found a jingle bell on his pillow. We sent the kids to bed and I colored the jingle bell. Nathan suggested I laminate it, so we decided to wait another day. Zoey came flying into my bedroom the next morning looking all around. Apparently she had been in everyone's room looking for the jingle bell. I told her to keep watching for it. It was actually a few days later that it finally got started, but the kids have been doing great with it. We've decided to continue with the tradition clear until Christmas. And the attitude in our home has totally changed. It is just like the story. I'm not going to say that no one ever fights, but there is plenty of service going on. Even when people don't have the jingle bell. I'm LOVING it!!
There are poems at the end of each chapter that summarize what that character teaches. I also printed off the poems to hang up to remind us what we're supposed to be learning that week. I hung Joseph's up for his week, but when I went to change it, the kids begged me to keep up all of the poems, so Joseph moved up and we put a new one in the page protector. Our wall is going to be covered with nativity poems by Christmas.
This one is for Joseph.
And here is my jingle bell.
Last Monday, we learned about the lamb. It also incorporates Simeon and Anna. I was so excited to see them in this program!! I love their stories and they are not usually brought into the nativity stories. From them, we learned about recognizing the Lord in our lives and being immediately grateful. For this tradition, I put a picture of a lamb on a box and put some papers and pencils inside. When we recognize something the Lord has blessed us with, we can right it down and put it in the box. Our box becomes a gratitude box. I chose this one this week because it is the week of Thanksgiving and it seemed to fit well. Once again our family has taken to it amazingly. Our little pile of papers is growing. And our attitude is changing again. We are often talking about "jingle bells" (acts of service we've been prompted to do) inside and outside our home and things we're grateful for. It really is hard to have a bad attitude when you're thinking about others and what the Lord has blessed you with.
Here is our poem that is up this week.
And our gratitude box.
One more thing that the book talks about is having a nativity and
putting each of the characters in the nativity as you learn about them.
I only have one nativity with all of the characters we'll be talking
about. A magnetic one my mom made. It has a few other characters, so I
put up the stable, donkey, cow, camel, and star to start. The kids
noticed immediately and asked where everything was. I hadn't told them
what we were doing yet, so I told them I'd tell them all about it on
Monday. When we learned about Joseph, I introduced it by showing them
Joseph from the nativity. They recognized it immediately and were
excited. I put his character on the poem for that week and we put him
in the nativity scene last Monday after our week of learning about him.
Now we have our lambs hanging on our poem and we'll put them up on
Monday. The kids are excited to see each character as we learn about
them. It's working better than I ever hoped. I feel like our attitudes
are different, the feeling in our house is different, and we are able
to focus on Christ this year for Christmas; not Santa, what presents
we're getting, etc.
Our magnetic nativity on our door.
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