Keeping Christ in Your Child's Christmas, Part 1

We had a great parent coffee last Thursday, and shared lots of ideas. I'll share some with you over the next few days. One of our weekday teachers shared an article with me that said that you really can't take Christ out of Christmas. He loved to party and fellowship, so anytime you get together with believers, he is there having fun with you! I liked that! Takes some of the pressure off. But here are a few ideas for you. Sorry I didn't get them up last week so you could start them on the 1st. Better late than never!

To start, this is my favorite site It has 25 days of ideas! Love it!

Here are ideas gathered from our weekday teachers, preschool director and myself.
· Buy or kids can make something as a birthday/Christmas gift for Jesus. Wrap it and put it under the tree for Jesus. Unwrap it on Christmas morning, and then over the years you can look at His gifts and talk about them together.
· Invite Jesus to Christmas celebrations by setting out an extra place setting for Him. It would be cute to have a dress up gold crown and set it on His plate!!
· Give your children 3 gifts from Santa because Jesus received 3 gifts.
· Make a birthday cake for baby Jesus and sing Happy Birthday to Him.
· Wait to put baby Jesus in the nativity scenes until Christmas Eve. You can have the baby Jesus wrapped up in a gift box, and let that be the first gift that they open on Christmas Eve night or Christmas morning.
· Go with your extended family to a candlelight service on Christmas Eve
· Read the Christmas story from Luke before you open presents.
· Play 'I spy baby Jesus' all season long. It helps to focus their eyes on Christ instead of other things as they actually searched for him everywhere.
· Display a manger scene in your front yard. You can make the manger yourself and use hay from your garden to fill it. Use a doll as baby Jesus. Swaddle him and wrap a beautiful bow around him. Highlight him with a yard spot light.
· Allow your children to choose from the World Vision catalog a special extra gift to buy and pray a blessing over. You can get things like mosquito netting or goats.
· This is my idea. We put a manger scene on our fireplace, but take Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus out. We take Mary and Joseph as far away from the manger as you can, usually upstairs, and each day of December move them closer and closer until Christmas Eve they arrive at the manger! And then baby Jesus joins them Christmas morning! Cade pointed out that the shepherds and wise men weren't there either, so our shepherd and his sheep are on a table in the den and the wise men are under the boys' tree in the other room. I think we may wrap baby Jesus up and put him under the tree.

More ideas tomorrow!