Advent. My absolute favorite time of year. This is the time, the four weeks before Christmas, that we focus our hearts on Jesus and plan for the celebration of His birth.
It is here!
Joy to the World! The Lord is come! Let Earth receive her King.
Let every heart prepare Him room!
And Heaven and nature sing!
And Heaven and nature sing! And Heav’n and Heav’n and nature sing!
That’s my jam. Perhaps you have caught on, sweet friends. I kind of love Advent.
Friends, there are resources that have turned our Christmas season upside down and have helped our hearts to focus and have transformed our family times into teachable moments and little celebrations of His birth. My Christmas has been redefined.
Listen, I love Christmas across the board. I love the secular reindeer, the snowmen, the elves, and we even do the Santa thing in a way that works well for our family. Make no mistake. I can rock around the Christmas tree with the best of them. That’s all great fun, but I need even more time spent with Jesus.
Christmas is Jesus. I’m happy to celebrate His birth with Christmas trees and fudge just like I celebrate the birth of my children each year with balloons and cake. It’s the best celebration of the whole entire year. You know this. I know this. Yet, the celebration gets rushed and the season has scheduled activities.
In all of the busyness of His birth, we just might forget the One worth celebrating if we aren’t intentional to focus our hearts.
Let every heart prepare Him room.
To prepare Him room? This is the deepest desire of my heart. And focusing our hearts doesn’t happen by accident. We have to be purposeful.
I want this for you and your families too. Christmas can be so special and so meaningful a time. I want your hearts to prepare Him room, too, sweet readers! May I share my very favorite resources with you? I feel as though I’ve discovered a few treasures and I don’t want to keep these to myself!
- Unwrapping the Greatest Gift: A Family Celebration of Christmas by: Ann Voskamp Our family enjoys reading a page of this beautiful devotion each night of December. We are learning more and more about the salvation story beginning with Adam and Eve and stretching throughout the entire lineage of Jesus. Each member of our family is looking forward to this Christmas tradition again this year. We incorporate a small Jesse Tree and the free, printable ornaments from AHolyExperience.Com. A little hint from our family to yours: We encourage our children to listen and take part in answering questions by allowing “good listeners” to put the ornaments on the Jesse tree at the end of the devotion. This means that some nights two ornaments get put on the tree and other nights, we say, “Try again tomorrow.” For the most part, we have continually been pleasantly surprised by the way our boys take part in these daily devotions during our dinnertimes. If we eat out in December, you can guarantee this book will be packed in my purse! It’s simply THAT special!
- The Women of Christmas by: Liz Curtis Higgs Friends, I am almost finished with my first read-through of this book and I’m completely undone! I have seen Mary, Anna, and Elizabeth in a whole new way. Liz Curtis Higgs does a beautiful job of guiding her readers through the beloved scriptures of Christmas while opening our eyes to the hearts of the women who have become so familiar. I have a special place in my heart for Liz’s writing style. You’ll fall in love with this book. In the words of Ann Voskamp, “Liz beats with the reader’s heart.” She truly does.
- The Beginner’s Bible The Very First Christmas Picture Book This is a simplistic retelling of the Christmas story, well suited for little ones from crib to elementary school. At approximately $1.97ish, these make excellent gifts for multiple children (such as a class of Sunday School kiddos) or might be a meaningful stocking stuffer for your own children! Our family has two copies from one of our favorite Sunday School teachers, Miss Shelley who so sweetly gifted each of my boys this treasure as they passed through her preschool Sunday School classroom. Church teachers: let us all take note and learn from Miss Shelley!
- The Nativity Story (Movie) This. Of all the activities I put in our family Advent calendar, this may be the one I personally look most forward to! We make it a family movie night with popcorn and hot cocoa. Just an FYI: It is almost completely appropriate for all ages, but we do skip scenes of violence since my children are small. The rest of the movie is absolutely beautiful. My favorite part? When the Wisemen top the hill and one says to another, “How is your faith now?” Yep! I give that part of a fist-pump every time. I can hardly contain my appreciation for that line! Chills, I tell you. The glory of God meets me in my living room every year. Grab some cocoa and join us, won’t you?
- The Pine Tree Parable by: Liz Curtis Higgs I don’t want to give any spoilers, sweet friends, but this parable is the perfect tale of selfless Christmas giving and mirrors the sacrifice of Jesus in a way that littles can truly understand. Set in a Christmas tree farm with snowy scenes on every page, I sort of want to climb into the book. Excuse me while I google the nearest Christmas tree farm.
- Christmas Is Here by: Illustrated by Lauren Castillo This book illustrates one of my favorite (and very popular) Christmas passages in scripture and brings the KJV to life. If Linus in Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown hadn’t already caused us to fall in love with this passage, this little book would certainly do the job! There’s something about the KJV’s account of shepherds and angels that makes my heart grow three sizes…like the Grinch…only the opposite, I suppose. Wait…did his heart grow or shrink? It’s time to revisit that one.
- A Wowiebozowee Christmas (Boz the Bear) We were gifted this movie by my friend, Emily when I was babysitting her son a few years ago. I certainly cannot take credit for finding this gem, but I can absolutely endorse it! Boz the Bear is a happy, jolly, and strangely green cartoon bear with cartoon children as his friends. They sing catchy songs and talk about the true meaning of Christmas. As much as I enjoy Santa Claus and similar traditions, it is refreshing for my children to have a light-hearted video with the same level of merriment without a cheesy Santa story-line. Boz knows how to celebrate Jesus’ birth with joy!
- Fisher Price Little People Nativity Playset Cutest. Thing. Ever. You know how you always got in trouble for moving your grandma’s nativity set figurines around? Just me? I was always in trouble for this. Enter the Little People Nativity Playset. It isn’t breakable. It’s actually a toy. Yet, my children can experience the interactivity of moving shepherds and donkeys around…and they leave my breakable nativity set alone. Everybody wins!
- The Adventure of Christmas: Helping Children Find Jesus in Our Holiday Traditions by: Lisa Whelchel Shout out to my brilliant blogger friend, Jennifer Roskamp at TheIntentionalMom.com for suggesting this resource book! Christian author, Lisa Whelchel {you know…Blair from The Facts of Life} shares the meaning behind many of our seemingly secular Christmas traditions. From the Christmas tree to outdoor lights to caroling and baking, Lisa reminds us how each Advent tradition is grounded in the foundation of the Gospel and relates to the birth of Jesus. She encourages us, as parents, to view Christmas traditions as a part of the birthday celebration for Jesus on every page of colorful illustrations. This book also supplies parents with ideas for celebrating with children as well as discussion questions for children. The former teacher within me infers that this book would be best suited for children in elementary school: perhaps Preschool through the sixth grade. I’m thankful to be adding this dandy to my own list of Advent resources!
- The Greatest Gift: Unwrapping the Full Love Story of Christmas by: Ann Voskamp There are no words to express how much I adore the words of Ann Voskamp. If you’ve known me for five minutes, you probably already get the idea. Much like the first resource I shared, this book is the “grown-up” version of Unwrapping the Greatest Gift and offers space for journaling and writing responses to daily devotions. I’m all in. I’m basically counting down minutes until December 1st.
- The Berenstain Bears Get Ready for Christmas This pairs well with the play nativity set I was telling you about earlier. How? I shall tell you! The Berenstain Bears have a Nativity Scavenger Hunt in this adorable picture book. We gave this book and the Fisher Price Play Nativity to my middle son for his first birthday. Don’t judge…December birthdays are tricky for a Momma who’s completely obsessed with Christmastime. The struggle is real. Since our middle guy turned one, we have been celebrating Advent with a Nativity Scavenger Hunt thing. It’s always one of the activities in my Advent calendar and it takes essentially zero preparation time. Glorious, no? We read the book and then look around the room for the figures I’ve hidden prior to the read aloud. Meaningful and easy. You can thank me later.
- The Greatest Gift DVD Experience by: Ann Voskamp Friends, this is the equivalent to curling up with a big blanket and watching the snowfall…for your soul. This DVD series has four sessions and a simple discussion guide inside. The DVDs are meant as the component to resource #10 but can be used without the book as a simple weekly study. I showed the videos to my adult Sunday School class last year. (1 per week for 4 weeks=Advent Study) Listen. The only thing better than Ann Voskamp’s books about Christmas is actually listening to her teach about Christmas herself. Your heart will be abundantly nourished and pointed toward our Savior. I cannot recommend this enough. Pull a few friends close, make a pot of coffee, and press play. This is another simple way for us to focus our hearts this season. You will be so thankful for the time spent in communion with Jesus.
Precious friends, please know that I do not receive any commission for any of the above suggestions. These are purely from my heart to yours. Each of these resources has been tried and true, tested and approved in the Stanford home. I want to share the joy of a Jesus-centered Christmas with you! May your soul be blessed as you make room in your heart for Him.
Let every heart prepare Him room. And Heaven and nature sing!”
~Joy to the World
Let us remember the One we are celebrating. May this year’s Advent proclaim His faithfulness like never before! To God be the glory!
From my Christmasing heart to yours, ~Courtney
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