I love Christmas and we like to start the celebrating, decorating early in the Fowler household.
One of my favorite traditions with the boys is a the Jesse Tree. Now I had never heard of this until about 5 years ago. It was mentioned on a parenting forum I am on and it has become a favorite around here.
A Jesse Tree represents the family tree of Jesus and tells the story of salvation from Creation in Genesis through the Old Testament until the coming of the baby Jesus. It is a beautiful way for us to focus during the holiday season on the true meaning of Christmas.
We use this book of devotionals The Advent Jesse Tree . I like it because they are written for both adults and children, there are hymn options and scripture readings. It has 25 devotions so we do one every day during December.
After we read the devotional the boys take turns adding an ornament that represents the scripture to the tree. When we first started this someone on the parenting board suggested that we do a swap for the ornaments. We each agreed to do a certain ornament (or two) and then we made 25 of the same ornament. We sent them to one person and they sorted them and then we got back a box of 25 different ornaments. It was lovely to see the different ornaments that everyone made and how creative they were. It makes a lovely addition to our tree every year and there are a few favorites.
So what are your favorite holiday traditions. What do your kids look forward too? Do you do a Jesse Tree or some similar Advent tradition? I am hoping to share some other neat traditions in the days to come.
This week I will upload photos of our Jesse Tree ornaments for a new swap I am hosting. Come back and take a look.
1 comment:
We have Advent ornaments that we talk about as we hang them up, but nothing formal every day leading up to Christmas.
One of our holiday traditions is to go shopping together for the Angel Tree that the boys' school has up. They each get to pick a child and we talk about how blessing them at Christmas shows us God's grace and abundant love towards us at Christmas.
Those three gifts each year, for boys I will never know, comprise one of my most precious and sacred moments at Christmas.
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