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Anyone read “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever”? Remember the mayhem of the Christmas pageant? That’s the Malizzos when it comes to traditions. Really. Some of the “traditions” I’ve come up with are fun: stockings, cookie exchanges, making ornaments (what was I thinking? Glitter….enough said), decorating, and Christmas cards. I’m a little tired just thinking about it.

What do my kids remember? Likely they will just remember stocking paraphernalia, cookie icing, glitter, and the cool lighty-up mini Christmas tree that they fought over. Not too bad. Fun memories certainly. We celebrate Christmas with all of our fun, and there’s nothing wrong with that but what about Christ?

Are these “traditions” just giving a nod to a baby in a manger so we can get on with the gifts?

To be honest, I don't have very Christ-celebrating fruit when I push for “my” traditions. Christ’s fruit (joy, peace, and patience, to name a few) are festivity-ed out of my heart. And then - true confession - I end up feeling guilty. Guilty for spending too much money; guilty for sort of mixing culture with sacred; guilty for personally not focusing on the Messiah King more than decking the halls.

If that’s me celebrating Christmas then what does it look like for me to celebrate Christ?

Funny enough, it’s the traditions that I really have very little to do with. It’s lingering fellowship with dear friends around our kitchen table, movies with others, time away from the crazy to be a family, and PJ’s until noon. It’s eating cookies together with milk and hot chocolate while staying up past bed time. It’s reading “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” as a family. It is NOT anything having to do with glitter because glitter is just wrong.

These are the things that make me dwell on how “the Savior reigns” and make me want to “repeat the sounding joy”. They are Kingdom gifts as are Christ choosing to wrap Himself in flesh, choosing to be a servant rather than a king, and choosing to give His perfection to us and die as the guilty in our place. And they turn my heart to worship the baby in the manger and not just give a nod.

Celebrating Christ during Christmastime, by enjoying his gifts, trumps the mayhem of the Christmas pageant and brings rest.

“Dear Heavenly Father,

… As my family prepares to celebrate the arrival of your Son, help me instill in my little ones awe, reverence, and a sense of the beauty of the season. Keep us from frantic activity. Guide us toward times of peace and reflection. Let the focus be on you, dear Lord, rather than material things. Order my priorities: family time over perfect decorations; quiet moments around the dinner table valued above gourmet meals; carols sung and cookies baked instead of another trip to the mall. Let my life reflect your love, and in this reflection draw my little ones closer to you. …Amen.” (by Cindy Crosby)

This has been my unspoken goal every Christmas season since I read that article 12 years ago. 

I suppose our Advent Traditions are the most intentional piece of this goal. One year I found a ‘great’ idea online. It consisted of making a holiday craft every day of December leading up to Christmas. Ha! That lasted about 3 days!

I quickly learned that our traditions MUST be simple. 

We have a few favorite traditions that we have tried and enjoyed through the years. The easiest for me has been reading “The Advent Jesse Tree” by Dean Lambert.  Each day’s devotion is about one page (short) and goes through the history of God’s redemption beginning with creation and sin, and ending with our Savior born in a manger. I created clip art for my kids to decorate with glitter glue. Most years I made a tree out of construction paper on the wall for the kids to tape their ornaments to.  A small tree on a table would be even easier!

Another favorite book has been “Unwrapping the Greatest Gift” by Ann Voskamp. The stories are a bit longer, but are written more as a story and the pictures are lovely.  I was able to print ornament-sized pictures to color and put on our ‘tree’.

Another favorite tradition is a quiz! On Christmas Eve Micah would play a game quizzing the kids to see how much they remembered from our devotions? Correct answers moved the Christmas Morning wake-up time earlier; incorrect answers moved the wake-up time later!

Our kids’ favorite (but most difficult for me) is our Advent Scavenger Hunt.  Before December 1^st I wrap all the pieces of our three nativity sets into tissue paper. Each day in December we read a Bible passage and I send the kids on a scavenger hunt to find the nativity piece that corresponds with that verse.  By December 25^th all the pieces have been found and the nativity sets are complete.

Another idea that I used one year was to wrap all our Christmas books in tissue paper and let the children choose one book to read each evening in December. (I think that unwrapping gifts is the most fun so why not give the kids something to unwrap?)

Other traditions include: swapping out our regular mugs for Christmas mugs during the month of December; wearing Santa hats while delivering home-baked cookies to neighbors and taking turns opening gifts Christmas morning so that we can enjoy each present as they are opened. And we throw the wrapping into the middle of the floor. The bigger the pile the better!

There are so many ways to celebrate the Christmas season, and it’s impossible to do EVERYTHING every year! I really try to keep the Christmas season enjoyable for our family. If something is causing stress then we don’t do it. What’s the point if everyone is grumpy about the preparations? 

Twelve years ago when I first read that article, Tristan was 4; now he is 16, Emily is 12, and Katie is 10. Time does fly by!

Choose what matters to YOUR family and focus on those traditions!

May God’s love transform you into a light that shines for HIM this CHRIST-mas Season!

Although not as traditional as some, our advent season is filled with family, joy and expectation, just the same. One of our favorite Advent traditions combines Christmas books and a sort of countdown.

Being a bookish family, a book-related Advent idea appealed to me immediately. I first heard about it from the lovely Sally Clarkson of MomHeart Ministry fame, but have seen other people share it since then.

The original idea is to wrap 24 Christmas themed books, and unwrap one each day to enjoy leading up to Christmas.

This is great for smaller kids, because as they see the pile grow smaller, they know that Christmas is getting closer in a real, tangible way.

We have added movies to the mix, just one or two per week, our favorites (think White Christmas, It’s A Wonderful Life, The Nativity, etc.)

The books are all types; we have the fun, very American ’Twas the Night Before Christmas, and The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, but also more meaningful and traditional The Three Trees and The Nutcracker. One of my favorites is Why Christmas Trees Aren’t Perfect which encourages service to others.

In the beginning, we didn’t have enough Christmas themed books to get us through, but this is where a thrift store can really come in handy! Over the years we have replaced some of the less-loved thrift store books with beautiful, meaningful, favorites.

It is possible that as our kids get older, the books may get more grown up too, but we will probably still have a few family favorite picture books in our pile!

For our family, to gather together and experience a story has become one of our favorite parts of the Christmas season. It is truly a joy to watch the kids unwrap a book and have their faces light up in anticipation!

Jesus and joy go hand in hand. The angels confirmed it that night, long ago. And this is one joy-filled tradition that transforms us and brings us closer together as a family.

Have you ever rented a movie because you heard that one particular scene was incredible? When you sat down to watch it, did you fast-forward through everything that occurs prior to the amazing scene, and then shut it off right after you’d watched it? I doubt it...who does that? You’d miss out on so much! You’d have no context for anything that happened in the scene, and would not have any understanding of the depth and complexity behind the events. We don’t do this because we understand that the writers, producers, directors, and actors have carefully prepared the entire movie for their audience. They have thought through every detail, planning the perfect presentation of that amazing scene as well as a resolution that brings everything together in the end. So, could you say that you’d seen the movie if you’d only watched one scene? No...no you couldn’t.

Now, with this in mind, let’s talk about Christmas. With the hustle and bustle of the season...which is really only four weeks long...it is easy to end up experiencing the holiday much the same way as the movie experience described above. We do think about Jesus’ birth, the angels, the shepherds, the wise men, the inn. However, as we stroll (or run frantically) through stores and wrap gifts and deck the halls, our thoughts rarely turn to to Noah...or David...or Rahab...or Joseph. Christmas zooms by, and we collapse on December 26, wondering, “was that IT? Christmas is...just OVER?” And maybe there’s a bit of a let-down...like you’d just watched a thrilling scene...and now it’s done. Maybe it feels like there should’ve been more to it...a lot more.

The thing is...there is.

This story, the story of a good Father who sends His only Son to get His precious ones back, it’s been carefully prepared for you. It is a story that was written long before you or I existed, but with you and I in mind. Every detail on every page has been purposefully crafted. Is it any wonder, then, that if we skip or skim most of it and only jump in at the part where the baby is laid in the manger, we end up feeling like we’ve missed something?

We have.

The advent season, the four weeks before Christmas, was always a time of spiritual preparation for my family.

Why would we need to spiritually prepare for Christmas? Simply put: so that we wouldn’t spiritually miss out on the whole thing.

When we’ve spent 4 weeks leading up to Christmas contemplating God’s amazing plan to rescue us, the celebration of the “advent”, or arrival, of the Rescuer Himself is unbelievably rich. There are many wonderful ways to do this. Our family has a “Jesse Tree” that we put up on December 1. The tree is named after David’s father, Jesse...and the name “Jesse” means “man”. As you know, Jesus referred to Himself as the “Son of Man”, which harkens back to prophecy concerning the Messiah...who would be one of David’s descendants (Daniel 7:13-14, Jeremiah 23:5-6).

We read a chunk of scripture each day and hang an ornament that depicts something from that day’s passage. The passages span much of the Bible, so that we get to experience the entire story. The passages also reveal what Jesus’ family was like.

We are reminded of the joy that is ours in being grafted into this family of redeemed sinners; and as we hang the ornaments on the tree, we remember that our adoption into His family was accomplished by Jesus hanging on a tree.

If you’d like to give this a try, here’s a suggested daily reading plan. The passages are suggestions on specific events upon which to meditate for the day. If you find yourself unfamiliar with them or simply wanting more, please read further as your time allows.

The more you read, the greater your experience of Christmas will be. (Order of passages taken from Ann Voskamp’s The Greatest Gift):

December 1: Isaiah 11:1-2, 10

December 2: Genesis 1:1-5, 26-27

December 3: Genesis 3:1-24

December 4: Genesis 6:5-22

December 5: Genesis 12: 1-7

December 6: Genesis 21: 1-7

December 7: Genesis 22:1-2, 6-14

December 8: Genesis 28:10-16

December 9: Genesis 37:3-4, 31-33, 50:15-20

December 10: Deuteronomy 5:1, 5-22, 29

December 11: Joshua 2:1-21

December 12: Ruth 1:1-17

December 13: 1 Samuel 16:1-12

December 14: Isaiah 9:2, 6-7

December 15: 1 Kings 18:18-24

December 16: Jonah 1:1-3, 17; 2:10; 3:1-5

December 17: Micah 5:2-5

December 18: Esther 4:10-17

December 19: Habakkuk 2:1; 3:16-19

December 20: Luke 1:6-17

December 21: Matthew 3:1-3

December 22: Luke 1:26-38

December 23: Matthew 1:18-23

December 24: Luke 2:1-7

December 25: Luke 2:11-19

Now, after Christmas is over, I’d invite you to continue reading through to Revelation, and begin your New Year with new perspective on this great big story...because it isn’t over yet. There’s much to look forward to as yearn for the day when our Lord who came back to get us makes all things new.

December 26: Matthew 3:13-17 December 27: Luke 8:1-2, 22-56

December 28: John 19:1-30 December 29: Mark 16

December 30: 1 John (Yes—read the whole book. Take a couple chapters in the morning and a couple at night.)

December 31: Revelation 1:1-3, 5:11-14, 21:1-7

In the sweltering of July, my mother finds her candles on sale at Hobby Lobby. She is always excited to find three purple and one pink. She can’t wait to call me and ask if I want her to purchase some for me as well. She is thoughtful and generous.

Why is she so happy about unusual colored candles? Because she uses them for her Advent Wreath in December. There is something touching and beautiful about her excitement as she considers celebrating the shocking miracle of the day that Christ came in the flesh to redeem His people.

I love this tradition too, although I never remember the reasons for the different colors. On the four Sundays that precede Christmas, Gabriel, myself, my mother and my father gather in a circle. My mother lights the candle, and then each candle progressively as the weeks continue. The first one will be a stump by the time Christmas arrives.

My father has a book of Scripture and prayer that we take turns reading. We start with the centuries old call of Isaiah and lead into the unbelievable fulfillment of them. No one could have written this story – it’s so perfect and so unimaginable. It is a time to ponder and marvel in anticipation.

We are reminded of our black, our shadows, our red-guilt. We are reminded of His purity, His Light, His red-blood that has cancelled our debt. We wonder, “What was it like for Mary? For Joseph? What about the shepherds?” We read of their fear, their confusion, and their obedience. We discuss the ramifications of their courage and faith.

Sometimes, I weep in our little circle. Quietly, and I don’t think they see it. But to watch my Dad, my Mom, and my son all together in prayer in worship is overwhelming.

It is a gift that I can’t fully express – I know our histories, our struggles, and how God has rescued us and reconciled us. First to Him, and now to each other. Our family has been rocked by death, by disease, by pain and hurt, and yet God’s mercy has enveloped us. It is good to gather and worship together. So good.

Maybe this is why my mother gets so excited in July when she finds those candles?