Our Christmas Values....

Several weeks ago when I found this website I knew I wanted to put together some "Christmas Values" for our family. This would be a way to keep my focus on what was important to our family during the next month. We already have everyday "Family Values" that we have posted on our wall, so I was familiar with the idea, I just wanted these values to be specific to Christmas. After talking to Eric this is what We've come up with.

Our Family Christmas Values....

1.Jesus should be the center of all we do. As our family verse says, So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to glory of God. 1 Cor. 10:31. Some practical ways we try to live this out....

• Decorate with different manager scenes. We try to make the manager and Christ birth the center of our decorations. We even have several manager scenes that our children can touch and play with.
• Talk about Jesus' birth to prepare our children and our own hearts for His Birthday. Make His birthday the center of our celebrations. "We give gifts to remember the greatest gift given."
• Read books, watch movies, and listen to music about Christ Birth.
• Have a Birthday cake for Jesus the morning of Christmas. I serve a Breakfast cake.

2.Giving should be our focus. This one is hard in our culture. Children are so easily the focus of most of the giving. So I'm sure we could grow a lot in this one!!! Some practical ways we try to live this out.....

• Have the girls, the older two, use their allowance from November and December to give. They pick out gifts for family members and wrap them themselves. This helps them to feel the blessing of giving.
• We also encourage them to give to the needy. Our church is having a special offering for children who live in Cambodia this month and we have talked with our girls about giving to them. We have allowed them to choose how much of their own money they wold like to give.
• We also have our girls only ask for 1 present for Christmas, no lists. They get more than one gift so I just pay attention to some things they like, but they can only ask for one.

3. Have family Traditions to bond us together. Noel Piper talks about how important traditions are for your family in her book Treasuring God in our Traditions. After reading this book I was affirmed to continue what I had learned growing up..... traditions bind a family together. Eric didn't grow up with traditions, so it took him some time to see the value in them, but he has come a long way! Now he looks forward to our traditions and sees how they create a bond between us and our girls. We hope to create a sense of belonging within our girls hearts to each other through them and to draw them to the Lord. Some of our traditions are....

• Make Christmas cookies together. Most of them are the same each year.
• Decorate our house together, especially the tree.
• Buy our girls an ornament each year that they can open on Christmas Eve. This makes tree decorating so much fun!
• Have a birthday cake for Jesus Christmas morning.
• Read the Christmas story before opening our gifts.
• Celebrate with family.
• Go look at Christmas lights together.

4. People are more important and valuable then things. Oh how this can get distorted this month with all the gift giving and decorating. We want our girls to see that the gifts and all these decorations around us aren't as fun, entertaining, or valuable as people and relationships with them. Jesus was born for people! Some ways we try to live this out....

• Be hospitable often. Invite families over and make arrangements for our girls friends to come over too.
• Let our girls help decorate, even though there is a chance something could get broken (which things do). Let our girls help make and wrap gifts even though it might not look perfect. They are more important then any decoration or my image!
• Do our Count Down to Christmas Jar. Something we started this year:) This lets us do things together.
• Spend lots of time with family. On the holiday itself and throughout the month.

I look forward to doing each of the values this month. I pray that God blesses us with the ability and grace to live them out, for I know He wants us to spend our time wisely...

Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time... Ephesians 5:15-16