Making the Most of the Holiday Season

It happened a few days ago. It was a strange feeling, a little unexpected but not unwelcome. My husband doesn't feel the same way, and thinks it's too early, but the kids have been feeling this for some time now. What happened? I started getting excited about Christmas!

Back in October I was following Cheri Gregory's 'A Holiday-Ready Heart'. I love her witty but poignant way of writing, and would recommend you have a look at her posts for the 31-day challenge over at The PURSEonality Challenge Blog. However, because we don't celebrate Thanksgiving (being British) the holidays seemed like a long way away back then.

Then came an invitation to celebrate Thanksgiving with some American friends, and I started thinking about what we could do to embrace the meaning of this celebration with our own children. I settled on Ann Voskamp's Thanksgiving Tree idea (you'll have to skim down to her entry for Nov 7th). Our leaves are all cut out and ready for writing on tomorrow!

And I guess once I'd decided to do that, I started remembering all the fun crafts we would be doing in December to prepare for Christmas, and that was it. I'm now thinking about where to put all the decorations this year whilst unconsciously humming 'Hark the Herald Angels' to myself.

If any of you are like us and live overseas then you've probably had to send out your 'Christmas present request list' to your families back home already. And if you're anything like us then you're resigned to the fact that most of these precious parcels will arrive in January or February anyway! Once a Christmas parcel arrived in sweltering hot June, containing a hand-knitted woolly sweater from Grandma. I put it on the baby, took a quick photo, and promptly took it off again!

So as we start getting excited about Christmas with our families, here are some things that I'm finding helpful and inspiring:

• A good place to start, if you're a perfectionist like me, is with a Christmas planner. There are some good ideas over at 'Christmas Your Way'.
• I'm really looking forward to doing Truth in the Tinsel again! It's a fun way to talk with your children about the meaning of Christmas whilst doing some simple crafts. I highly recommend buying the ebook if you haven't got it already. I've found it a good alternative to the more widely known 'Jesse Tree' idea, which just seemed a bit too much for my preschoolers.
• We're also looking forward to making our advent wreath again and lighting a candle every Sunday whilst reading some Scripture as a family together. There are different ways of doing this, but here's one link that explains what the wreath is. The first Sunday of Advent is the 2nd of December, so we need to have our wreath ready by then.
• Christmas music of course is a must! We have a CD of children's Christmas songs, and a more classical 'Carols from King's College, Cambridge' which we love. This year I'm looking forward to buying Kari Jobe's Bethlehem album.  I bought her two other albums while we were in England earlier this year, and I just love her voice, her lyrics and her music!
• Finally, I'm looking forward to joining in with the Christmas Bible study over at Good Morning Girls to prepare my own heart for the Christmas season. It starts on 26th November, so go and get subcribed if you haven't already!

Qu: What special things are you planning to do with your family this Christmas?

Qu: What special family traditions do you have around this upcoming holiday season?

Qu: How do you manage to keep Christmas meaningful amidst all the stress and commercialism?

I'd love to hear what helps and inspires you!

Abide in Him!

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Photo Credit:
small candle - freedigitalphotos.net/ graur razuan ionut
star ornament - freedigitalphotos.net/ suat eman