Keeping Christ in Christmas

There are so many things that we can do to make sure that our children are well aware of the "reason for the season," and I do think that we need to work hard on this, daily, throughout December, because the material side of Christmas is so well marketed! Have you noticed that Santa is everywhere? After giving it a lot of thought, we do include Santa in our celebration, and we also have strong emphasis on family traditions including baking, singing, and decorating our home. Most importantly, however, I try to make sure that throughout Advent my children really learn the biblical story of Christ's birth.

I volunteered a bit in a Catechesis of the Good Shepherd Atrium, this is a Montessori-model religion program for preschoolers, and there I learned that children really respond so well to hands on activities. In the Atrium, they have a "work" for all of the Joyful mysteries of the Rosary, and inspired by this I created a Nativity work, which you can easily reproduce at home.

We use a Fontanini plastic Nativity set. This is an Italian one which looks like carved, painted wood, ours was a wedding present and I have added pieces to it over the past few years, and I prefer that it is not cartoonish. It is very Montessorian to let children use real things, rather than toys. Even though the set is plastic, we talk about how special the figures are and how we carry them with care. You could use any that you have that is not breakable. (Using a ready made Nativity set was a breakthrough for me since most of the works in the Atrium are hand made, but really if I waited until I made my own figures I would be doing this with my grandchildren!)

Anyway, along with the Nativity set, we use a simple narration of the Christmas story, ours comes from a board book called The Story of Christmas. As I read about each character, I hand the figure to a child and she places it in the stable. One thing I really like about this particular book is that it includes the Annunciation and the angel's visit to St. Joseph. The children are welcome to choose this "work" during choice time in school, and we also do this a few nights a week as a bedtime story. By the end of Advent a three year old child can tell the story himself!

We have tried some other Advent activities over the years, but this is one that has really stayed with us, perhaps because it is really so simple. I would love to try some new things, especially simple crafts, that keep the focus on Christ, if you have any suggestions!