If the Christmas season stresses you out and sounds expensive, consider this: can you start a family tradition? Advent is our favorite time of year – a time filled with hope, love, prayer, and family togetherness. Below you’ll find some of our favorite Advent traditions – family activities for Advent we have on our list each year.
Family Traditions Keep Us Connected – Past to Future
Family Advent traditions? We know you might be thinking…too much work, no time, why bother? Or maybe you can’t think of something that’s extraordinarily stupendous? Well, that’s the wonderful thing about a tradition – it actually begins as an ordinary, one-time thing, maybe even a silly little idea. Before you know it, someone wants to repeat the fun the next year and the next, and the next… and just like that, you built a tradition.
Now, as December rolls around, many of us think about the tradition of giving gifts. That’s always a favorite around here too. But, in addition to “gifts” in the traditional sense, I was thinking about the season, and the Advent traditions our family has considered to be “gifts” over the years. So many of our family and friends have loved taking part in these traditions – we were asked to share! Perhaps something here will spark a similar idea for you. If so, please email us and share!
5 Advent Traditions For Families
Giving a gift out of obligation or just to check it off your to-do list often leaves you feeling empty – no matter how much you spend. But, gifts that are heartfelt signal appreciation, admiration, happiness, love….like a hug in a box.
Consider how you can use these 5 gifts to start new traditions with your family this year!
- Sharing
- Connecting
- Family Time
- Stories
- Blessings
Sharing: An Advent tradition of giving to others the gifts we have
Random acts of kindness go here. For example, Mary and I bake a bounty of homemade goodies in December. So we wrap many of them to give away because we have so much fun baking and sharing together.
The boxes of tasty treats are like our little Christmas wishes for our loved ones, announcing the season to old friends and new with “I wanted to remember you!” They’re given to teachers, school bus drivers, babysitters, coaches, store clerks, butchers, mail deliverers, college kids, home-bound folks, neighbors, you name it – anyone would would like the little treat. (For some of our favorite Christmas cookies, click here and here.)
Connecting: Making time for our friends and loved ones (even when we have a long to-do list!)
Think sending Christmas cards or letters is a chore that takes too much time? Consider Christmas notes a two-fold way to continue friendships and connect.
My dear friend and I landed on our tradition quite by accident one year when we were scrunched for time to get our cards done but wanted to meet for lunch. “Why not work AND have lunch?” So despite our separate lives and busy families, we still meet at a coffee shop to work side-by-side on our Christmas cards every year…and we get them done. It’s become a good time for us to slow down and enjoy each other’s company as we share many laughs, stories and memories while we work away.
Family Time: A tradition of togetherness and finding family activities for Advent
Can you think of ways to instill family values and carve out time together during Advent? Long before you set down to the family Christmas dinner, you have opportunities for family togetherness. Maybe your time doesn’t result in doing the same thing every year – it’s our time together that’s the tradition, not the event. So over the years, we’ve celebrated the season by having teachers/priests over for dinner, making nativity crafts together, caroling in the neighborhood, playing piano at a nursing home, making Advent chains with “to dos” for each day, buying for needy kids, etc.
Stories: One of our favorite Advent traditions
Find a book to share or write down a story of your own. Kids both young and old like stories, and this could be a tradition they’ll love for years.
Here’s how one book turned into a 40-year tradition for me: Without thinking it would become a thing, I bought our first toddler a book about the Christmas story – not as a gift, but one to read and share until Christmas arrived. I found another special book the next year, and another the year after that. Now, 40 years of books focused on the season…and I continue the tradition for the grandkids! So many favorites – The Littlest Angel beautifully illustrated by artist Paul Micich, The Other Wise Man by Henry Van Dyke, The Third Gift by Linda Sue Park,The Quilt Makers’ Gift by Jeff Brumbeau, Little Lamb Finds Christmas by Cathy Gilmore, and more. (For some of our favorite Christmas books to snuggle up with, click here.)
Blessings: Remembering “the reason for the season.”
Maybe your traditions are built on age-old customs. We have two traditions in this category. One is the custom of lighting our Advent wreath at each meal time, followed by the regular blessing that begins…“Bless us, oh Lord, and these Thy gifts…” The second is a tradition passed on by my mom, based on an Old World ritual of baking fresh homemade bread to serve as part of Christmas Eve’s potato soup supper. It begins with each person getting a slice of warm bread and offering his/her slice to everyone, one at a time. When you tear off a small chunk of someone’s bread then you offer, in return, your hope for that person for the coming new year.
Yes, ‘tis the season of giving….Enjoy the gifts!
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