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Christmas Traditions that Teach Our Children - Part 4

Part 4 of 4

Prepare for Christmas All Year

For your child’s own birthday, plan a special day with presents, activities, and individual time. This will set the stage for doing the same for Jesus on His birthday. During the year, buy things your children are asking for in the way of clothes (both necessities and treats) as you can afford them and give them to the kids before Christmas. Each time you buy them something, explain that Christmas time will be time for giving to Jesus. Set them up for it -- create excitement and expectation by the following:
a. Save money in a special bank all year for a Christmas gift to Jesus (have everyone in the family contribute toward this gift, or have each family member save in their own private bank) -- and give the gift(s) on Christmas either to your church or to a particular mission or para-church organization.
b. Have your kids write an accompanying letter or card with the gift explaining how they saved all year toward this gift for Jesus and His work.
c. Encourage your child to make gifts -- have the whole family make their Christmas gifts for others. Plan time in September or October to decide what gifts the family will make and to whom they will be given. Have a gift-wrapping night for these homemade gifts when the whole family does wrapping together (except for those prepared for family members who are present at the time.)

Miscellaneous Additional Suggestions
1. Set realistic prices on purchased gifts for family and others -- refuse to go into debt to satisfy your child’s every whim or to buy "guilty conscience gifts".
2. At Christmas, keep individual gifts to family members at 1 or 2 gifts each.
3. Create a festive atmosphere during the two weeks before Christmas -- in preparation for the big celebration. Plan time for fun things together -- like a special musical, play or movie with the Christmas theme, (i.e., A Christmas Carol, Miracle on 34th Street, It’s a Wonderful Life, etc.). Make a huge family bowl of popcorn to share together.
4. Help your children look forward to the season, without gifts to them being the focus of their attention.
Give special privileges during the holidays, such as taking turns with the lighting of the advent candles;
Plan all-nighters or late nights watching videos together as a family or doing a fun activity with special friends;
Get together with other families to attend special church Christmas events or Christmas exhibits;
Spend an evening driving around to see Christmas lights;
Go caroling to neighbors or shut-ins or patients at convalescence facilities.

Realize that if your children are already older, the re-education will take time and work. If you do this joyfully, they will soon enter into that joy. Both parents must be equally enthusiastic about it. Encourage your children to ask their friends to join your family for some of the special occasions.
Share these ideas with other families in your church, with your extended family and with your close circle of friends. It would be very encouraging and helpful to the cause of a Christ-filled Christmas if your kids can see others doing similar sacrificial, life-instructive things during the Advent season.
Ask God to help you to come up with creative ideas for your own family with it’s own special needs. Keep the themes of “joy” and "praise" in your thoughts, speech, actions and activities during the Christmas season. For God Himself inhabits the praises of His people.

Have a wonderful, Christ-filled, blessed Christmas season!!!

The End

Christmas Traditions that Teach Our Children Pt. 3

Part 3 of 4

In two earlier blogs I began to share with you some ways to make your celebration of Christmas a joyful time, instead of a period of tiresome, meaningless rituals that have little to do with the birth of Jesus the Christ and leave you an exhausted, bundle of raw nerves. You and your kids need to refocus on Jesus first. Then you can properly . . .

Focus On Others
1. Emphasize that Christmas is a time for giving, not getting. Teach your kids how to be generous toward God by giving to others:
a. As a family, help to serve a meal in a soup kitchen on Christmas Day.
b. Let the kids help to make and serve a special Christmas meal in your own home to which you invite homeless people, or neighbors who have no place to go for the holiday, or people from your church who have no family in the area--single people, elderly adults, or foreigners and aliens residing in your town.
c. Visit someone in a nursing home or a children’s hospital on Christmas Day.
d. Bake cookies for neighbors, shut-ins, or service people (the postman, garbage collector, etc.), considering dietary limitations, such as those of diabetics.
e. Send a money gift to a Christian organization that deals with world or national hunger, housing for the homeless, etc., in the name of someone on your list who is hard to buy for. Have your children write a card to the person in whose name you made the gift, explaining what your family did in that person's name.

2. While your child is still young, teach him/her about personal generosity that reflects God’s generosity to us. Let’s face it: none of us were born with natural generosity. We learn how to be generous by example and teaching from others.

David and I have some friends who encouraged their young son to select a few of his Christmas, gifts before opening them, to take to less fortunate children. He learned to give. Today, as an adult, he donates time and money to such enterprises as Habitat for Humanity. Several other families have their children give some of their toys that are in good condition to children who have none; or to spend some of their own money to purchase gifts to send to a less fortunate child somewhere in the world.

More to come . . .