Christmas Countdown, My Way

Somehow, Christmas sneaks up on me every year. I have these visions in my head of perfect evenings snuggled around the fire with my family, doing sweet little yuletide activities…but reality is a lot more frenzied than the peaceful scenes of my imagination. There are gifts to gather, wrap, deliver, programs and parties to attend, work, church, bills to pay, dinner to make, dishes to do, music lessons and practice, homework, house entropy to stay ahead of…augh! Still, I love this holiday season, and have been making efforts to slide some meaningful traditions into the craziness of it all.

It may sound funny, but I’ve struggled with Advent activities in the past. I tried paper rings one year…and lost count somewhere in there (did I mention the days are busy?). The cute little cut-and-pasted Santa, where you glue one cotton ball to his beard each day: too much for me, I mean really– I’m expected to hunt down a cotton ball and glue every night?! Our fabulous Kindergarten teachers send the kids home with a Hershey Kiss version, but there are two problems with this: 1-not enough for every kid in the house! and 2-all chocolate is consumed within 30 minutes of arriving home–it’s an unspoken rule around here. I found a really fun advent idea I wanted to do with my cubby cabinet (it just happens to possess 24 compartments and would be awesome!), but that would require me to find, decorate, and fill 24 containers with some sort of advent treat or activity (in advance!). Maybe next year.

That said, the kids like to have some perspective on how far away the big day is, and I wanted to incorporate more Christmas Spirit into our routine, so I printed up a simple December calendar to keep in the basket of Christmas books parked under our tree and assigned a day to each child. As we gather for our nightly reading and family prayer at bedtime, the designated person chooses which Christmas book we’ll read. So far, it’s gone off without a hitch. If we have a late/busy night and miss our routine, we just read two stories the next evening. I love it!

How do you fit your holiday traditions into the whirlwind that is December?