I enjoy reading about other families’ traditions around the holidays, especially families with preschoolers. We want to be purposeful in our Christmas traditions in that everything points our children back to the true meaning of Christmas–that God became a helpless baby, born in a barn of all places, as a part of his plan to redeem us to himself. In seeking this goal, we have chosen not to do Santa, but that is not the point of this post. Many of these ideas are from the book, Treasuring God in Our Traditions, by Noel Piper. Thomas gave me this book when we were engaged, and I highly recommend it.
Every night during Advent, we read a bit of the Christmas story, repeating the previous nights’ portions so that by the end, everyone has just about memorized the story. We read an adaptation of Noel Piper’s advent calendar story (DG used to sell a simple Nativity scene calendar and Noel’s readings. It was discontinued a few years ago, but I got the readings from a friend) and use this magnetic Nativity Advent calendar. We keep it on our kitchen table on a cookbook stand for the month of December.

We started a new tradition this year of doing a Jesse Tree. Every night during Advent, we also look back at many events, beginning with Creation and ending with the birth of Jesus, looking at the big picture of waiting for the promised salvation of God. We borrowed a little tree from my mom, but a branch would suffice. We are doing these child-friendly readings . Each night we read a Scripture, discuss, and hang the related ornament on our little Jesse tree. I bought many of the ornaments at Hobby Lobby–they have little painted wooden cutouts that go perfectly and are nicer than cardstock. The rest I have made from felt or painted little wooden squares to go on the tree. Here is a sample for inspiration:

We also keep kid-friendly nativity scenes out for the kids to play with, but I think we need to hide Baby Jesus and only bring him out at Christmas because he is a highly coveted item between these two kids! I also like Kendra’s idea about leaving an empty cradle under the tree.
On Christmas morning, we bake a cake for Jesus as a way to celebrate His birth. This may be Josiah’s favorite part!
In an effort to steer the focus away from gifts and teach about giving, we assemble Operation Christmas Child boxes each year. This was an easy thing for Josiah to understand and we talked about and prayed for the little boy who would receive the box of items Josiah had helped pick out for him.
From Noel Piper, “May our decorations, gifts, and festivities–or lack of them–never block our view of him (Jesus) but always point us toward him.”
If you would like to read our advent calendar readings, you can read on. (Thanks again, Megan, for typing them up for us.) Read more »