The Advent season is underway,
but it's not too late to start this wonderful Christmas tradition. Below are
links to all the Advent Devotionals. This Sunday, we had our first Family Advent Night— it lasted all of twelve minutes.
However, it was such a special
time of quieting our hearts and focusing on the true meaning of the season.
Watching the kids sweet faces in the candlelight, talking about what hope
really means and hearing those little voices sing— I told Mark, it feels like
we’ve already had Christmas.
It did remind me of a
couple handy tips that I thought we could share here:
Set-up a schedule of who
lights which candle, it can rotate, stay the same each year, whatever— but
having this mapped out ahead of time can save on squabbles.
At our house, our eldest
child has the honor of lighting the first candle of Advent and the youngest
lights the center Christ candle on Christmas Eve. All the other candles we
switch around and they don’t seem to mind.
When you all come together
take a minute to close your eyes and have everyone take some deep, quiet breaths.
Mark had us do this on Sunday and it immediately changed the energy in the room
and our hearts.
Mark also finds the hymn we
are singing on YouTube. You can find the hymns with the words presented in
slide format and the musical accompaniment. It made our “O Come, Emmanuel”
sound pretty good.
(Your choice, we like Christmas Eve)
Thank you, thank you, for
the wonderful response to this series. Our hope and prayer is that it can and
will be an encouragement to seek out ways to have an authentic Christmas filled
with joy, love and meaning. Please feel free to let us know any questions you have
or anything you may want us to tackle next year.
Merry Christmas!!
It's also not too late to get organized and put a plan together for a great Christmas season—check out this post for my planning and prep tips.
