Savoring the Advent Season with Kids

Embracing peaceful chaos

Advent is my favorite season, and it's very easy for me to get caught up in every party and present and completely forget what the season is for. It's taken me a while, but now we have some simple family traditions that help us enjoy the Advent season, so I don't end up with 16 crafts a week plastered all over our home. I mean, I like a cute craft, but sometimes it's too much. I wanted to share a few things we do to spend time with this season.

I have my own devotional

If I'm not taking time to reflect and prepare my heart each day, I cannot expect my children to do that either. Each year, I find a different devotional and take some quiet time to reflect. Sometimes, that is a book with daily meditations on Advent; sometimes, it’s a journal, or sometimes, it's just the daily readings. Whatever it is, I make sure I carve out time each day to prepare my heart for the birth of Jesus. This year, I'm using

Tsh Oxenreider

’s beautiful devotional “Shadow & Light," which you can find here.

We get our bare tree up

I went to Costco before Halloween and saw that Christmas trees and decorations filled the aisles—it wasn't even November!! I really dislike the idea of rushing Advent and making it a race to see how fast I can get my house to look like a winter wonderland. This is especially funny because we live in the desert—it's literally 70⁰ here. So we go slow on the decorating and simply put up our tree after the first Sunday of Advent.

We hang lights on the feast of St. Lucy

Celebrating our children’s patron saints is a big deal in this house. On December 13th, our Lucia has a sweet felt candle crown, we have sweet rolls, and we put lights on the tree!

We watch A Muppet Christmas Carol… a lot

This movie is incredible. It uses more dialogue directly from the original text than any other movie remake. The music is brilliant. Michael Cain as Ebenezer Scrooge is incredible, and Kermit as Bob Cratchett is perfection.

We go see the lights on Gaudete Sunday!

Usually, after dinner, we put the kids in their pajamas, make hot chocolate to go, and load up the van. A few neighborhoods near our home have beautiful displays, and we take our time savoring each one.

We decorate on Christmas Eve!

We load up the tree with decorations and listen to all the classic Christmas songs. We watch Elf and make an easy dinner. Nothing fancy for our crew. Sometimes, it has been homemade pizza or tamales when my mom visits. Two years ago, we had Porchetta, inspired by the children’s show Bluey—the crackling!

My personal chef prepping dinner before going to Christmas Eve Mass

We light the candles on our Advent wreath at dinner

This year, our 8-year-old is in charge of lighting our candles. It just changes the mood and makes dinner a little extra special. Fair warning: there will be fights about who gets to blow out the candles.

Full disclaimer

This year will be totally different. We are spending Christmas with my husband’s side of the family in Mexico. So, while we did some of these traditions, we changed a few to fit in the couple of weeks we are home before our Christmas trip. Either way, making time for little special ways to honor this time of year is important, and I hope I gave you a few ideas! Share your ideas with me!!

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Let’s chat

1. What is your favorite family tradition?

2. What do you think is the best-est Christmas movie?

3. Who is your favorite character in Muppet Christmas Carol?