Christ Centered Christmas: Family Service

Organization is a big part of being able to keep your traditions centered on Christ. Every year begin preparing for Christmas by buying an inexpensive notebook to jot down all ideas and plans with an overall view of focusing more on the Savior. This can be a three-ring binder, a composition book, or a simple spiral book. You can decorate it with your scrapbook paper stash to make it look festive. You want something durable because you will be seeing a lot of this notebook in the coming weeks. A small notebook is easy to carry around with you so it is readily accessible for when the spirit hits you.

The Christmas planning notebook may be divided into sections such as:
*Budget
*Gift lists
*Menus, recipes, and baking ideas
*Calendar
*Christ centered traditions
*Spiritual thoughts and ideas for family lessons or study
*Service
*Cards and letters to write
*Ideas for children and family activities
*Service ideas and plans
*Anything else you need to write down.

Start organizing sections in the notebook early, even before Halloween, and add ideas and plans as you think of them. The entire purpose of this Christmas planning book is to help your family have the time and energy to focus more of your efforts and time together on the most important part of Christmas, the Savior.

This notebook will be your 'brains' for the next few weeks and next year you will have a great resource to draw from.

Now that you have your notebook and you are well on the way to being organized, we want to share with you some of our ideas and traditions for having a Christ Centered Christmas. The posts on this blog will provide you with various ideas that you can file away in your notebook and utilize to make your holiday Christ centered.

PLEASE SHARE any ideas you have with us. Either comment on an existing post or email Sarah at famtreeclimber AT hotmail DOT com.

We are excited to share the true meaning of Christmas together!

Monday, November 3, 2008

Family Service

Do a small kindness for Jesus. Do a service for someone in your family such as secretly making a bed for someone and leave a small figure of the Christ child at the site of your service. That person then has to do a kind thing in secret for someone else in the family. We try to keep a couple of these baby Jesus figures (you can sometimes find these at the Dollar store and Walmart) circulating throughout the Christmas season. It helps if a parent or an enthusiastic child is in charge of reminding people to keep this going. It is wonderful to have a spirit of service in the home!

Hang Christmas stockings early in the season and encourage family members to place notes of appreciation, love and noticing the good deeds of another and read them on Christmas.

Place a basket of straw near your nativity and encourage family members to take a piece of straw and place it into the manger each time they do a kind deed for someone else. This idea was used for an Family Home Evening idea posted on Sugardoodle

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We are two sisters, Sarah and Anna, and our Mom, Ruth working together to compile and share traditions that are centered around Christ.

We love traditions that bring us closer as a family and help us remember our Savior at Christmas. Our family has enjoyed many of the ideas listed on this site and we have many happy memories resulting from the traditions established through the years.

We also love trying new things and searching through the creative ideas of others on the internet. We hope to be able to bring all these ideas together to share the true meaning of Christmas, our Savior.

There are a lot of resources yet to be added. Check us out often!