There are hundreds of advent guides online, but today we wanted to share a few of our favorites to help you decide how to spend the Christmas Season with your family.
Each home is different, children or teenagers are interested and capable of different things. BUT, every family has the privileged and responsibility to draw closer to the Savior this Christmas. We encourage you to look at each of these ideas and cultivate your own family advent. Whether you make time for each of these every day, or choose one that would work well for your family- we believe that you can create a tradition of coming unto Christ during the holiday season.
(photo by Tami Schellenberg @tamischellenberg)
A beautiful initiative from The Church of Jesus Christ that reminds us to serve others every day in small ways, whether you are sending a complimentary text to a friend or learning an ancestor's story.
With a beautiful new (historically accurate!) nativity video and daily text reminders to serve, Light the World is a perfect jumping off point for our advent suggestion #1:
Take time to SERVE this season.
Download the Light the World Calendar Here, or visit ComeuntoChrist.org
Created by our own Graceann Oswald (@creatingaheavenlyhaven) from Seek Learning, this is a short, daily scripture guide to the Book of Mormon. Each day, read a testimony of Jesus Christ from Book of Mormon prophets.
We recommend supplementing with testimonies from your own family members. Send out an email request asking Grandparents, aunts, uncles, or cousins to share their testimonies with you. Print them off and save them with the 25 Days of Christ- and don't forget to add your own testimony too!
Download the 25 Days of Christ Here or find it on our homepage.
How often do we listen to this beautiful music? If you're like us, it may occasionally play in the background while you're making dinner- but we don't take time to really study it. We love this blog post that shares how to study the Messiah every day, with selections of the music to listen to, along with the correlating scriptures that Handel used for the text of that selection.
We shared our Christmas Poetry bundle and Hymn book, gathered by Becky Pitcher (@becky.pitcher) yesterday, and we plan to use it as part of our Daily Advent. Read and discuss one poem a day. Not all the poems in the bundle are focused on Christ, but you can either skip the ones about Santa and mistletoe (leaving more than enough poems about Jesus), or you can read them all. We love discussing the magic of Christmas, how Santa represents the Savior through selfless giving, and the power of believing in things we can't see.
Download Here or find it under the Downloads tab on our homepage.
A quick search online shows that there are dozens of Christmas advents that focus around the many names of Christ. We like having out children write one name each day- but that's because we like their cute handwriting. If you want an advent that's already been put together, we like this one by As For Me, which includes a free printable.
We have lots of other ideas, actually. Daily picture books about Jesus, family history stories, classic artwork about the Savior, or trying a new recipe every day.
We hope that you take the bits of this that feel right for your own family, and carve out time every single day for Jesus Christ, during the holiday season. And always.
We'd love to hear what your traditions are for creating a Christ-centered atmosphere at home during the holidays!