When we value the story of the birth of Jesus and the bigger Christmas story of the incarnation that it tells, the modern trappings of Christmas can seem daunting to any family that wants to tell that story and transfer its values to their children. It can be easy for the cultural consumerism to take over. From my limited experience I want to show the tools we use in our house to tell the story in the hope that it might help others.

Allow me to be very clear this is not a post to rage against the consumerism of Christmas, nor is it a bah-humbug post against what most of our culture enjoys around this time – I’m starting to move on from that.

We have a 7 year old girl and for her, Christmas lights up with the thought of presents, the Christmas tree, candy canes, the colours, the lights, the music and everything else going on around us. The challenge for us is how to incorporate all of that beauty and celebration in a way that doesn’t overwhelm the value system and story we want to impart at this time of year. Here’s what we do and while we’re yet to see the proof of how well it works due to the fact that our daughter is still young, I think there is value in it.

The Christmas Tree

I’m not a Christian who is against Christmas Trees because of their supposed origins as a pagan symbol. In our house we use a fake one though, because I am one of those annoying people who starts sniffing and sneezing if I’m around the real thing for too long. For us though, the tree and the presents that sit under it don’t dominate our living space. It sits off to the side. On it are decorations given to us, decorations my wife and daughter have made and, of course, lights. At the top is the angel. A lot of those decorations tell a story. They’re part of our Christmas story. We used to have another type of decoration on there that expressed one of our core values, but with too many of them to go on the tree now, we have to place them somewhere else. Which brings us to another thing to use.

TEAR Fund Gift for Life

Many people, Christian or not, would agree that generosity is a key aspect of the Christmas story. One of the things we’ve used to communicate that to our girl for the past years is TEAR Fund’s Gift for Life catalogue. We’ve let her choose gifts from there that will go directly to those who don’t have access to things we have access to and we get a card to demonstrate that. To start with we hung those on the tree but over the years we’ve collected too many for that, so they now go on our bookshelf.

Advent Calendar

A couple of years ago I had the pleasure of receiving an Advent Calendar from a work colleague as a secret Santa gift. Advent wasn’t something I knew of growing up but in recent years I’ve found it to be rich in symbolism and meaning, and a perfect way to focus in on the nativity story as a family.

Our girl gets the calendar set up well before the start of Advent because it involves chocolate. Each day of Advent comes with a verse in the Christmas story, the birth of Jesus, from the gospel of Luke and each day has a chocolate. She, of course, is in it for the chocolate, but each day we get to read a verse from the story, chat about it and eat the chocolate. It’s great to walk through the progression towards the birth-day itself.

Advent Candles

I have to admit that we were late coming to the party on this one as this year we only got to the candles today, the last Sunday of Advent. In my head I guess I had seen them as a thing to do in church gatherings and hadn’t given them proper thought as useful in the home – it was simply a matter of not thinking about it as opposed to shunning it, but what a wonderful practice!

Today we sat around the candles and lit the one for each Sunday and with each we discussed the theme for that candle. We had a brief chat about hope, joy, peace, and love. We discussed how each of these relates to the Christmas story and our world now. On Christmas day we will light the Christ candle. Next year we’ll weave that through each Sunday of Advent in our home.

The Nativity Set

For me this is the central element for telling the Christmas story. This sits in the middle of our living space. I know some people who have one and they bring out different pieces as Advent progresses, but we set the whole thing up from the beginning – there is no deep thinking behind doing that. Our girl touches, shifts and adjusts it more than she plays with the Christmas tree, and that’s a good thing. In the set is the Christmas story and having it there as the central element enables us to chat about that story from time to time.

I had the privilege of getting our set in Bethlehem during my last visit there, from Bethlehem Bible College. It’s hand carved from Palestinian olive wood and due to my personal connection to the place it carries a lot of significance for me. If this is something you would like to do for your family, find a set that somehow embodies some of your values and be willing to invest in it. It’s one of the more worthwhile things you can own.

We’ll still do presents and use them to talk about generosity and we’ll still do food but these are the things we use to tell the story that’s important to us and weave it into who we are as a family.

If you have traditions and practices in your life to tell the story I’d be very interested to hear what they are. What do you do?

A Note on Santa

I’ve had a few people ask me how we deal with the cultural push of Santa as the central figure of Christmas. We’re lucky in that we have an introverted daughter who has always been a bit freaked out by Santa in public places. All other times of the year we teach children to be very careful of strangers and then at this time of year we’re encouraging and in some cases, forcing children to sit on the knee of a strange man. Go figure.

Our daughter’s caution of Santa has made it easy. We’ve explained where Santa comes from and some of the ideas around Saint Nicholas. Recently she got some Santa costume pieces and I said to her “oh, you’re dressed up like Santa.” Her emphatic and slightly annoyed response was “No! I’m dressed like Saint Nicholas!”

We have neither actively encouraged or discouraged the idea of Santa in our house. It can be a good story to emphasize generosity. She asked us for the truth early on, so we told her. We didn’t call the whole thing silly though. We talked of him in the same vein as many other characters she likes as a child. With that in mind we enjoy Santa movies and Santa stories. We’ve also been teaching her not to destroy the story for other children. That helps her understand why I go with the Santa thing on the Crazy Christmas Kids Show on Newstalk ZB every Christmas morning when I host the show.

What will come to the fore in your household will be whatever you choose. We actively emphasize the Christmas story of our faith with the things above, so naturally, that’s the story she gravitates towards. Santa doesn’t need to be crucified in your home as some sort of evil, just find what you want to emphasize and how you’re going to do it and then just let that naturally rub off on your children.