Christ Centred Christmas

I'm currently reading a book called Celebrating Advent

It's a compillation of daily advent devotionals enough to last two Christmases.

In the preface it mentions:

The pressure of our cultural Christmas celebrations crowd in on us. We find ourselves running in a million different directions. Where is Christ in all of this? Christian families feel the tension more acutely than any. Christmas should be a joyous celebration of our Lord's birth. We want our children to grow up with treasured memories of family times at Christmas - times when Christ is honoured in our families. This is what we long for, but somehow we don't know how to make it happen.

I found it interesting that religious people could feel more stressed at Christmas time as they know the season carries a special meaning to them (when ideally we should be least stressed?) They know that they must do more than:

Eat, open presents and party.

Even since I read that I've been thinking about it.

I love Christmas. I love traditions. I want my children to learn about the real meaning of Christmas.

To get to know God.
To understand the great importance of the birth of the Saviour
To do service for others.
To use the season to read, contemplate, understand the bigger picture
To spend time together as a family, to be still and listen
To take note of the year and embrace a new one.
To be better and do better

It's a lot on our shoulders hey?



Sometimes the Christmas stress bug hits me, not often because I love Christmas, but I too can be found complaining about organising  things, lack of money to buy all I want, wanting things just so (having to stop my inner OCD from wanting to place all decorations myself! and banning children from touching any of it ;) having too many things to attend.

What are some ways YOU are able to incorporate the true meaning of Christmas? How do you impart these sacred truths?  How have you taught yourself to slow down? Please share!

Here are some of the things we do as a family to help remember the reason for the season.

:: Pictured above is a decoration we make nearly every year. I cut out any picture of Jesus from a year's worth of Ensign magazines. We place a scripture on the back and laminate. Add a ribbon and they are used as decorations for our tree, attached to presents, given away to neighbours with plates of cookies. I have made hundreds of these things! We started this tradition after one year I realised we had no decorations on our Tree that depicted Christ. Just as we celebrate all the pretty baubles and decorations we love, I thought it important that we also include the very reason we celebrate.

:: We've declared Dec 1st the day we put out our Nativity sets. As the first Family Home Evening in December is when we put up our tree, I thought it nice to start the season in our house with Nativities first. To place in our mind first up what we hold most dear about Christmas.

:: We hold a very simplistic Advent each Sunday for the four Sundays leading up to Christmas - We light some candles, share a scripture, hold a little devotional and maybe sing a carol.

:: For a month leading up to Christmas we try to make all our Family Home Evening lessons Christmas based. We can cover the Christmas Story, Religions meanings behind several Christmas Decorations, we watch some religious based Christmas movies.

:: We have included scripture versus in our Advent Calendar

:: We read Children's Christmas books every night in December. Along with the Santa and fun story books, I always make sure to include several books that depict spiritual messages.


Some Practical ways to help me achieve these things:

:: Plan! I plan out what we want to do/achieve. Eg I pencil in Advent devotionals in the calendar.

:: I try to purchase all gifts by the end of November so December can be used to purely focus on our family and the more spiritual aspects of Christmas I want to incorporate.

:: I usually start thinking about Christmas in October.

:: As much as we would love to purchase a gift for everyone in our life that means something to us, we realise we can't and even though it's difficult we try to keep gift giving to a minimum and realise that a smile, spending time with them or some homemade cookies is a better gift. People don't need more things, they need more love.


What are your ideas for Christ Centred Christmas?

 Please Share and join the discussion!