Get back to the true meaning of Christmas with your family, and join us in reading a part of the Christmas story each morning of advent with my FREE Printable below.
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Rethinking Christmas
Christmas has always been, and is my favorite holiday of the year. The beautiful lights, the cookies and delicious food, the presents, the tree, the decorations, the movies, the songs, the excitement and anticipation of Christmas morning, and of course most important, the celebration of Jesus’ birth! But over the past couple of years, I have been rethinking Christmas.
Being a mama, has caused me to slow down and think about the intentionality behind how we celebrate this beautiful time of year. Will we still exchange gifts and spoil the kiddos? I sure hope so, but it’s so much more than that. And, if I’m honest the past few years, while I have felt tremendously blessed with gifts given to our family, I can’t help but also feel overwhelmed by them at times.
How to Make Christmas Less Stressful
And I know I’m not alone in this, it’s so common for mamas to bemoan the aftermath of Christmas, feeling like the house is cluttered, and feeling like you now need to find a space to put all your new things on top of the things you already own. Now, hear me out, I’m not trying to be a Grinch about Christmas or sound ungrateful, gifts are wonderful, and often a huge blessing-I know many Christmas gifts I’ve received are very useful wonderful tools, things I use on a regular basis (a stand mixer, pots and pans, a sewing machine-to name a few from the last decade), but dreading the close of Christmas, is definitely not how I want to feel at the start of the holiday season.
I don’t want to be stressed with a million activities, and “obligatory gifts” to put away (you know where you give someone a gift and they feel like they need to give you a gift and vice versa and then you both gift junk-ikyk, we’ve all been there). Instead, I want to have meaningful traditions in our home centered around Christ. I want the Way we celebrate to be remembered- not What gifts we received.
Celebrating Advent
And you know what tradition I do love? I LOVE advent calendars. Nowadays you can find them with a number of things, chocolate, nail polish, coffee, wine, cheese. The ideas seem endless. But, if you know me, I’m interested in things that last, things that can be reused-timeless decor etc. So for about two seasons I kept my eyes open for a nice wooden reusable advent calendar. With little cubbies that I could fill with lots of different treats for either myself or the kids. And last year, I found one, at one of my favorite local boutiques, and it was on SALE. It felt meant to be. (Now I know I don’t have a link to mine, but this one is also so beautiful on Amazon.)
FREE Bible Verse Advent Calendar Printable
Now whether you buy an advent calendar, or already have one to use or not, you can still do this activity to foster Faith at Home. I have created another FREE printable, that you can download below. Where each day you read part of the Christmas story leading up to Christ's birth and the visit from the Magi.
You can either print it out and cut up the slips of paper with verses for each day and put them in your advent calendar, or you can just read them right from the screen. The beauty of this printable is that it’s already done for you, and you can easily replace and reprint if you need to each year, or if one gets lost, or GASP-crumpled by the dog, or coffee spills on it, or you know life happens.
I made something similar for a devotional for the ladies at my church last year, and I focused on names of Jesus and prophesy’s about Jesus’ birth and life. There are so many ways to celebrate advent. I hope that you give this a try with your family, and that this helps keep everyone’s eyes on Jesus this Christmas season.
I pray blessings over you, and may you have a very Merry Christmas.
And remember you are seen, and you are loved.
Links in this Post
Many links in this post are affiliate links. If you choose to use them I may make commission off of purchases, thanks for supporting our family if you do.
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