Advent Traditions

Family traditions are an important part of life. Few traditions are as powerful and engrained as those surrounding the holidays. Our family has a few advent traditions that we enjoy each year.

Jesse Tree

For the past few years we have had a Jesse Tree. A Jesse tree is decorated over the 24 days in December leading up to Christmas. Each day you add an ornament representing the bible passage for the day. It features important figures from salvation history including Adam and Eve, Solomon, David, and of course Jesse. This year the girls are coloring the ornaments as we read the verse.



Tree Decorating
For the past few years we have tried to set up and decorate our Christmas tree the weekend after Thanksgiving. It isn't too fancy, but the girls get a big thrill out of setting it up.

Goodies
Kati and the girls love to make Christmas goodies. The downside is that they seldom last until Christmas.

Peanut clusters - chocolate and peanut butter with peanuts.

Sugar cookies

Cutting out sugar cookies

Nativities
We have two nativity scenes that we set up each year. The grown up one, while nearly unbreakable, is for looking and not touching. The children's set is for playing with. Each day we get out one more piece. The girls are always excited to see who will show up each day.

Christmas Letters
We went back and forth on doing Christmas cards or letters, but like the creative aspect of doing a letter. So each year we try to get a photo, create a document, put our printer through a marathon, stamp and stuff envelopes, and then send our Christmas greetings to family and friends.