Every year I grab a cute box of chocolates with little doors on them. The kids always look forward to getting the chocolate.

  Some of them would say a line or two from the bible, and that was about it. 

I mean, No offense, but Hello Kitty and Hot Wheels just does not scream Christmas is Coming, Our Savoir will be born. 

You know what I mean? 

 

All that to say, this year we did it a little different.  To start I went through our massive book stash and found all the Christmas books I could find.  Then I hit the book store and grabbed some more. 

I was able to find most of the books on sale, but there were a few I paid full price for.  It was worth it.

When I wrapped the books I sorted them into long, short, Truth and fiction.  The books that would be opened on a Sunday were wrapped in gold paper.  It just made them stand out a little more.

Then when I added the dates to them I made sure that the book would work for that day. 

For instance, Wednesdays are super busy in our house so I made sure that the book for that day was a short one.  I also printed off a list of Christmas Verses that we could look up and read from the Bible each day.  I found them here.   When I told the kiddos what we were going to do for this years Advent Calender the first question I got was “What about the Candy? Will we still get Candy?”  Goodness, I didn’t realize just how important the candy part was. Good thing I have a HUGE stash in the pantry for just this kind of “emergency”. 

So each day, while they eat their candy they would unwrap a book and find the verse in the bible.  We would read the book as a family and then read the text from the bible. It was great way to read many perspectives on the Christmas Story as well as hear the Truth from the bible.  The kids had many questions.  The plan worked!!!When the Christmas season is over I will put the books away so that they will always be special.  I will keep my eye out for more Christmas books and make sure that the books are interesting for their ages.  

That is how we did it this year, how do you do Advent?  What are some tradition that you think about but have not got to do yet?

Thanks for Reading,

Donna