Hello again, friends. The holiday season is in full swing and we are busy celebrating the coming of Christ with family and friends. In the midst of coming and going one of our family traditions keeps us centered on the real reason for celebrating. Our nightly Advent devotionals remind us and help us to keep our hearts expectant, to long for the coming of the Savior, and to worship Him for all that He has done. The simplicity of walking through the Biblical story day by day, tracing the lineage of Jesus, following history as it holds its breath, every piece in its place, rising to the climax of eternity–it is my favorite time of the year. Every night after we light our advent wreath candles and read the Bible story, the kids make an ornament to go on our tree. Our advent ornaments are the only decorations on our tree.
I struggle a little bit every year with the desire to buy cute ornaments that I will someday pass down to my kids with stories about the year they played soccer or learned the violin. I know how meaningful a tree full of memories is. This year the kids have an artificial tree in the playroom with the ornaments we have accumulated throughout the years. It’s a nice compromise, no?
I do hope, however, that when they get a box full of homemade ornaments someday telling the story of the coming King, their hearts would be filled with expectation, and the memories of their own lives as the years pass would be marked by these stories.
Antonella made the first set of ornaments out of cardstock when she was three.
Jeremiah joined us the next year to help cut out foam sheets…
In 2007 they drew on wooden discs…
And for some reason in 2008 I bought enough frosted glass ornaments to last us two years. They painted them in 2008…
And colored them with permanent marker in 2009…
If you do the math, four kids making an ornament every night for twenty eight days equals one huge tree to hold them all. This year I got these little wooded cubes in effort to reduce the amount of things to hang on our tree. They draw a different story on each side.
I hope that the crafty aspect of the ornaments will develop as they grow and they can create some unique decorations. For now, markers and wood are about what the little ones can handle on a daily basis! So here is our tree, full of our faith’s memories.
I hope your family is enjoying the season and I hope that the many frivolous aspects of this holiday serve to point to the coming one, who came to save and will come again.