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Advent Activities: Making Advent Bright
25 Ways to Focus on Christ
BY LETICIA VELASQUEZ REGISTER CORRESPONDENT
November 9-15, 2008 Issue |
Posted 11/5/08 at 8:56 AM
In the
Velasquez family, we have learned that the more fully we prepare our hearts and
minds for the coming of Jesus, the holier our Christmas celebration becomes.
Advent helps push back the creeping commercialism of Christmas. Make this the
year that Christ, the true gift of Christmas, is at the center of his birthday
celebration by adopting one or a few of my family’s cherished Advent customs.
1. Shop early online,
wrap the gifts, and forget about them. Consider doing a Kris Kringle (Secret
Santa) exchange at the office, at school, or with friends to cut down on
spending. Collect possible gifts at yard sales during the year, or save
children’s art projects for family members.
2. Take a family photo
and use a religious Christmas frame for your card this year. You can find them
online at TrueChristmasCards.com
3. Make a Jesse Tree.
On a bare branch, hang a different ornament (symbolizing the ancestors of Jesus
in the Old Testament, such as Adam, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and David) each day
of December, and then read a short Scripture reading.
At NCRegister.com click “Resources”
to find helpful material.
4. Have an Advent
wreath, the same as we have in church, with four candles: three purple and one
pink (for the third Sunday of Advent, called Gaudete, which means “Rejoice”,
Sunday, since Christ is nearly born). Sing an Advent hymn like “O Come, Divine
Messiah” or “People Look East” each night as you light the wreath.
5. Keep an Advent
calendar. Buy a religious paper calendar, or consider a fabric pocket calendar if
you have young children, so they can place the items in the pockets for each
day by themselves.
6. Fill Baby Jesus’
manger with straw. Ask the children to tell you about their good deeds, and let
them put a straw for each one in a small manger at their bedsides. The goal: a
comfortable bed for the Baby Jesus by Christmas.
7. Fast. Advent has
always been a time of fasting. Although a bit less severe than Lent, it’s still
a time to serve simpler meals, give up sweets, and to enter into a spirit of
penance and recollection.
8. Visit the elderly in
your family or neighborhood. Ask them about their Christmas memories and
traditions on tape, and make a treasured keepsake for their families and yours.
Bring a package of homemade Christmas cookies.
9. Celebrate St.
Nicholas’ feast day on Dec. 6 by filling your children’s shoes with chocolate
gold coins, reading a short biography of St. Nicholas, and watching the CCC of
America cartoon movie Nicholas: The Boy Who Became Santa.
10. Teach your children
how to pray a novena for the feast of the Immaculate Conception, and say the
Rosary after attending Mass on Our Lady’s feast day. Wear something blue. Serve
a special dessert when you get home.
11. Contribute to the
Christmas of the poor. Sponsor a family in the parish; shop a catalogue of
gifts for the poor in the missions; save change from fasting for the poor box.
One of our family customs is to collect a box of unwanted toys to donate to our
church thrift shop.
12. Attend a parish
celebration of the solemnity of Our Lady of Guadalupe. In our parish, the
entire congregation celebrates after Mass with a Mexican fiesta. Your family
can have its own fiesta.
13. Wait to decorate
the outside of your home with lights until the feast of St. Lucy on Dec. 13.
Traditionally, girls dress in white robes and wear Christmas wreaths with
candles on their heads and wake the family with coffee that day. Include the
Irish custom of placing candles in your windows to welcome the Holy Family.
14. Teach your children
to sing a new Christmas carol every week and have them practice the songs on
their instruments. Give a concert to your Christmas dinner guests.
15. Buy a CD of sacred
Christmas music in Latin to listen to as you bake, wrap and decorate. It will
help to keep your minds focused on the Nativity.
16. Make your Nativity
set the center of your home’s decorations. Consider buying an unbreakable
collectable set and add a new statue each year. Let the kids play with the
figures.
17. Watch DVDs of The
Little Drummer Boy, Small One, or The Fourth Wise Man.
18. Put a “Keep Christ
in Christmas” magnet on your car.
19. Go to a local
shrine to visit the outdoor manger scene, preferably at night. Serenade the
Holy Family with Christmas carols. We like to do this on the Epiphany, when the
Wise Men have joined the Nativity scene.
20. Go Christmas caroling with other
families to your neighbors’ homes; have hot chocolate when you get back home.
Sing carols at a nursing home.
21. Participate in a
celebration of “Las Posadas.” This is a nine-day novena of preparation for
Christmas; a statue of Baby Jesus in the manger is passed from home to home,
beginning Dec. 15. The family whose home has the statue brings it to the next
family on the list, with two children dressed in simple costumes as Mary and
St. Joseph, asking for shelter in the posada (home).
22. Buy an oplatek,
a blessed (not consecrated) white wheat wafer stamped with the Nativity to
share with your family on Christmas Eve, in Polish tradition. At dinner, the oplatek
is broken and shared with the family, along with special prayers.
23. Make a traditional
Italian 12-fish Christmas Eve dinner — and invite a lonely family member who
remembers this custom to share memories about it with the children. The 12 fish
represent the Twelve Apostles.
24. Attend midnight
Mass as a family, all dressed up in your Christmas clothes. Make a special
visit to the manger to wish Baby Jesus a “Happy Birthday.”
25. Read the Gospel of
St. Luke’s Nativity story as you place Baby Jesus in the manger after Mass, and
thank him for coming to your family this Christmas.
Read
more by Leticia Velasquez at Cause-of-our-joy.blogspot.com.
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