Advent/Christma Traditions to Start?

When we were little, to reinforce the idea that it wasn't just Santa and elves, but rather Christ's birthday, my mother used to have a "birthday party" for baby Jesus on the day she took the nativity set out. We would have cupcakes, sing happy birthday to baby Jesus, and play with the nativity animals, then she'd read the passage from whatever gospel we were using that year and play a couple of Christmas carols on the piano for us. I need ideas about the Christmas tree---I'm thinking we may skip ornaments altogether this year and just do lights.

Oh, gosh, hadn't even gotten to thinking about that yet... I want to look for an advent calendar like what you're talking about. I'll keep my eyes open for other ideas.

We celebrate St Nicholas' feast day on December 6th. It's a fun tradition. Kids leave their shoes out and he puts a little treat in the shoe. It's a great opportunity to talk to kids about the real Santa Claus. We also select an Angel from our church's angel tree to buy a present for a poor child. It's never to early to introduce your child to helping the poor.

One of the traditions in our home is that each child gets to pick out an ornament(Dora, Winnie the Pooh, Hot Wheels, etc) from the store that we hang on the tree. As we do the tree each year, they all remember back to picking them out. When they are grown up and move away, they each get the take their ornaments to start using on their tree. Also we get the ornaments that have a spot to put a photo in each year and they see how they change from year to year. (Those I will probably keep):love: Another thing I did for a couple of years is to make a 36" braid out of macrame rope. then take 25 5x5 pieces of material: in each piece of material, you place a few pieces of candy or a small toy and tie with a ribbon onto the macrame braid rope you made. Each day the child gets to take one off. The kids really liked this but it was alot of work to put it together, but it is resusable. Hope I made these directions clear enough.

I was just telling my husband that I was going to get the Little People Nativity set for St. Nick's day for Cameron. He looked at me like I was nuts! I have such fond memories of raiding dad's closet for the biggest shoe I could find.:evilgrin:

You beat me to it - I was going to post the same question this morning! I'd been thinking about it over the weekend. We will be getting the FP Little People Nativity set out on the First Sunday of Advent to talk about/play with this year. We'll have a special little "play" with it on C'mas morning to place the baby Jesus in the manger. I also always put out the Advent wreath. And calendar (although this year, for the little guy we have a non-religious one that was his great grandma's that we will use. It has a stuffed mouse that moves to different pockets on a C'mas tree. Next year, I'll get out the kind we had w/ the paper "windows" to open). We also go to our local zoo to see animals and lights in December. Our adoption-related tradition is to hang a special Willow Tree Angel that represents his bmom on his little tree and say an extra prayer for her. And I have several books that come out at C'mas time only (in our house, the deco and festivities run the day after Thanksgiving until Jan 1st. Then we usually have everything put away way before 12th night...) that we'll read. And we'll sit in front of the tree each night to watch the lights and sip cocoa (or a nice tall bottle of milk....) We like to give treats to our barn/outside animals on C'mas day and remember the first animals warming Jesus and his family that First Christmas.

That is a really good idea. I always avoid the zoo because it's so hot and buggy. But I never thought to make a trip in December. It's perfect. Thanks

I was flipping through Family Fun and read about a fun and easy tradition--counting down through Advent by wrapping up Christmas/winter books and then unwrapping one every night. Some can be library books, some can be from baby's current collection and a few can be gifts to open throughout Advent. How fun is that???

Oooh - Anything w/ books is fun! Suggestion - let Hop on Pop be your first book! Oh no, then she'd want to unwrap the same one every other time.... More seriously, a good one I'd recommend is Max Lucado's The Crippled Lamb It's available in board book for the smaller kids.