As the years have gone by I have become increasingly disillusioned with Christmas. Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of Christmas, a day set aside to commemorate the birth of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Redeemer. I also love the idea of commemorating his birth by giving gifts to those we love, because Christ gave us many gifts, the greatest being eternal life. It seems to me (and I am talking in general here, not about a specific person) that increasingly we are giving lip service to the idea of gift giving and caring for the poor on Christmas and we are focusing more and more on GETTING. My family is no exception. I find that my children talk more of gifts and Santa and what they want from Santa than Christ and His birth and His gifts. I blame myself, I have created this, I love having an excuse to be extravagant in my gift giving (via Santa) with my children. I over the years have focused on the gifts more than true service and Christ centered worship.
Last Christmas, instead of the kids giving gifts to each other we had service ornaments. Each child drew a name and for the month of December they were to do service for the person they drew and add a special ornament to the tree every time a service was preformed. It went ok, especially for the first few days, they it kind of petered out and was forgotten.
So this year I thought I would mix it up a little.
We now have a service tree.
(this is a terrible picture, the lighting in my living room is not good)
On slips of paper I wrote down the name of a person, or a type of person (example: teacher, neighbor, friend) and put them all in an envelope. Every morning at devotional we draw a slip and for that day we all do a service for that particular person. I am thinking this will help us stay focused and do more service. Once that service had been done, and approved by a parent, an ornament is added to the tree.
I hope this helps my children become more service oriented.
As for how we celebrate Christmas, I think things are going to change around here in the next few years. I would like Christmas to become a Holy day of worship. First to go just might be Santa, I wonder why I need some stand in mythical man to give my children gifts? I know a lot of people say he (Santa) represents Christ, to that I ask: why do we need some stand in mythical man for Christ when we have the real thing?
How to you center your family on Christ during the Christmas season?
Aimee–
This is a beautiful post!! I love (and agree) with your reflections and conclusions on what Christmas has become. I love the idea of a service tree and the changes you have made this year!
Blessings to you + your family…and thanks:)
Aimee
Those are wonderful ideas. I too agree with your sentiments of what Christmas has turned into. I’m embarassed at our lack of focus on our Christ.
Thank you for sharing and for the reminder of the real reason for the season is.
God Bless You & Yours
I love the service tree! I believe Santa can be good depending on how you use him, we use him not as a symbol of Christ but someone who is very Christlike. He does not consume the holiday in our home so I find no harm in him. We do a lot of service this time of year and spend more time as a family doing it. We read Christmas stories every night of December too, which are Christ centered. Enjoy your Christmas!
I go back and forth on the Santa thing. I think you have to be really careful using him, and I know that in the past I haven’t been and Christmas has been all about Santa, at out house. So I guess I am just looking at it from my experience. I did see a blog post from an LDS Mom who did a whole family night on how Chist and Santa are alike and how Santa represent Christ, and that did bother me a lot. I think you are right, Santa can be done, but I think we need to becareful. I hope I didn’t offend anyone, I was just voiceing my own internal musings on the subject.
I love your service tree idea. I may be linking back to it in the coming days.
Merry Christmas!
Hello Momzoo,
I saw your baby blankets and thought how beautiful and how thoughtful of you, your friends & family are blessed to have you. You are blessed to have such a gift of creating something so nice.
I couldn’t leave a message at your recent post, for some reason when the post first comes out I can’t get into the comments section.
On another note, I have a personal question for you. Do you do a personal bible study at home? Please answer at my email if you like.
I am sorry that my blog isn’t letting you comment. I will have to talk to my tech guy and see if he can figure out what the problem is.
As for a personal Bible study. I do study the Bible at home, although I don’t have a formal study guide that I folow. I am more of a browser and topic girl. I pick a topic and study, or I go off of what was studied in Sunday School, or if I am teaching a lesson in church that week. If I don’t have anything specifically I am wanting to study, I browse until something catches my eye. As for the family, Dadzoo reads several verses before breakfast in the morning, and we also read a verse outloud to help memorize the particular scripture we are studing as a family.
Thank you for responding. What I do is much like you, but not as often, another area I need to ramp up. I’m praying for help in that department too 🙂
At our house we Santa only fills the stockings. Just like in the famous poem. We always have a service project planned for Christmas Eve like making Blankets or something soft to give to local Hospitals. But I really like your idea of a Christmas Service tree. I was thinking of doing an Advent gratitude box where every day each person puts writes down something we’re grateful for but that was side tracked when the East winds destroyed our backyard at the beginning of this Month. Keep posting, it’s nice to see someone out there is struggling with the same things and finding new ways to cope with raising a good family.
I love these ideas – both of them. My husband and I decided not to invite Santa, long before we had children. It was a good decision for our family, but I find that as my kids get older we’re needing to be more mindful of the giving aspect, as they still focus on getting. Getting is so easy, so fun. And I still like to give extravagant gifts… even without Santa.
My husband and I have been talking this year about how to make giving a larger part of our traditions. I’ve spent a lot of time pondering it. Thank you for sharing your ideas. It’s an answer to my prayers.
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