Advent

Reading The Advent Book has become a Christmas tradition in our house. The book is a bit pricey, however, it's very big and the pages are made up of thick, high quality, card stock paper. There are 25 pages and each page has a picture of a door which can be opened. When the door is opened there is a picture pertaining and leading up to the birth of Jesus, along with a verse to accompany each page. My kids are always excited to see what's behind the door for each day of Advent. I enjoy the tradition of reading the story to them, which has become so special to me. A quick search on the Internet revealed prices from $35.00 to $75.00 for the book.

Reading the Advent book is a tradition that totally works for us, as opposed to the year we tried to celebrate Advent by lighting a candle every Sunday beginning with the 4th Sunday before Christmas. That particular year my 2 oldest kids were ages 4 and 2.5 . For some reason they couldn't get past the fact that the lighting of candles is not always for a birthday party. Yes, I did try to adjust to the situation and explain that we were in fact celebrating Jesus' birthday, but they didn't get it. They wanted a PARTY, as in streamers, cake, and the entire birthday party works. When I was finished reading about the birth of Jesus, I suggested we sing a song - you know, like Away In A Manger, or at least something along those lines. Instead, they wanted to sing Happy Birthday.... to Hana our dog! After some debate and tears, they won. We sang Happy Birthday to our family dog.... for Advent. We have not revisited the candle lighting tradition. BUT, we do have our Advent Book, which has worked out quite nicely. Although, last night when we concluded our reading from the book, I suggested we sing a song LIKE Away In A Manger. Nope, they wanted to sing Santa Claus Is Coming To Town, which we did, and it eventually turned into the Bruce Springsteen version.

*sigh*

I enjoyed it =)

Jamie