Christmas Bible Study

Growing up, Christmas was a time for fun and gifts and Santa Claus. Our church tradition was not to celebrate the birth of Christ at Christmas. I can understand why, but usually it just gets ignored all together. For instance, yesterday Luci's Sunday School take-home paper was about Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego and the Fiery Furnace. It seems prudent to study the birth of Christ and the miracles surrounding His coming during the month of December--after all, many folks do celebrate Jesus' birth now and Bible study is always a good thing. So, with our homeschool activities, I decided to incorporate the Advent of Christ into our Bible studies. We began actively doing this in 1997.



Here's the book we started with:

It is an easy study for me to do, and includes crafts for the kids to do. Let's Get Ready for Christmas is on amazon.com.

A couple of years ago, we added this book, Adorenaments:

It came with a big book of little cardboard booklets that you can put on a tree. The whole study is about some of the names of Christ, and what those names mean to us. This year we are using the study book to make a bulletin board entitled, "Blessed Be the Name."

We have had various Advent wreaths with candles, and this is the one we use now. It is pretty and the tea lights make it safe for us to have around Luci.

We have a tea party on Sunday afternoon, studying what is in Let's Get Ready for Christmas. We light the next candle and have tea (or hot chocolate, or chamomile tea) and cookies, cheese and crackers, and other little snacks. Mom, we use Nana's fine China for this--it is quite fun, and the kids learn how to use the really nice things with proper manners. We also sing a few carols from some little song books that I found at Books A Million on the sale table for $1 apiece. Everyone picks out a carol (the traditional things, which are Biblical songs, really--like The First Noel) or a Christmas song (like Jingle Bells). It is a lot of fun, and even cool-cat Bryan still has fun doing this. Mostly, it is fun watching Luci with all of this. Children keep the fun going, even with something we've done over and over and have pretty much memorized. The boys looked forward to our December tea parties. Another bonus to having the tea parties: it keeps the hungries away when supper is so late because of evening worship.

Here's the Nativity set Mom and Dad got when we lived in Japan--Charlie, Tom, Sam and Janet, did you wonder where it disappeared to? If any of you had been the one born in Japan, it would be yours. Just the luck of the draw. I like it because it is a family treasure. Also because even the animals have slightly slanted eyes. Must be because they were created in Japan.

I've had to keep this in storage because Luci is in that climbing, grabbing and throwing stage and we can't watch her every moment, such as when I am helping the boys do their lessons.

Here's the one we have out now. I got this last year from Fisher-Price. Luci-safe. A few pieces are missing--did I mention that Luci is in that grabbing and throwing stage? No idea where the shepherds landed.