Christmas Traditions {New}.

This year we started a couple new traditions with our family.  One is an advent tree.  This has been such a meaningful addition to our Christmas countdown.  While it is so easy for us to get caught up in the material things of the holiday, we wanted to purposefully focus on the reason for Christmas, the birth of Jesus.  So starting on December 1st, we began our Advent Jesse Tree devotion.

We use this book:

I highly recommend it!  We picked this book because it is simple.  Each day (25 total) has a symbol, memory verse, song, devotion, questions and prayer.  The kids take turns opening a bag each night with that devotion's symbol, which they love!  Some of the symbols are ornaments that I had or made, things I have found around the house, or maybe bought new for this purpose. 

Our Jesse Tree Ornaments:

While I cannot find the original blog I found my ideas for our Jesse Tree anywhere, I did find this cool blog with an "Advent: In the heart and Home" featuring guest bloggers and their advent traditions.

It's too late to start your own Advent Jesse Tree this year, but keep it in mind for next year.  There are a lot of great ideas in blogland!

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Our other new tradition was the addition of Tinsel.

Tinsel is a small, vintage elf who could be found in a new spot each morning.

One December 1st he brought powdered donuts from the north pole. 

We had fun hiding him in a new place each night, when we remembered.  The kids had fun finding him each morning.  (Tinsel is not the same as the very popular "Elf on a Shelf."  We decided not to do that for a couple of different reasons.)  This morning Tinsel was found in the Nativity waiting for baby Jesus to arrive.  While we wanted to have fun, we did not want to take away from the importance of celebrating Jesus Christ's birthday.  Hopefully we accomplished that.

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Happy Christmas Eve!!!