Discovering Advent

We have been thinking about this upcoming holiday season and how we can make Christmas (as a young family) memorable, traditional, and wonderfully and joyfully celebratory! How can we celebrate treats and food and cheesy christmas sweaters and white elephant parties and gifts, not just for the sake of treats and laughter and chocolate and presents, but enjoying these things as a shadow of the greatest gift to mankind, the incarnation: the God-man, the Savior, Creator of the world, come to bear in real space, real time, real history!!!! This is amazing! And should be celebrated with the best of occasions, and remembered as a true gift to mankind.

After some thoughtfulness and research, we have found that there is so much out there that we can do as a family to remember Christ, to learn about him, to meditate on him and to grow starting today, the first of December through the 25th. I had never heard of the Jesse Tree before, but we are adopting this tradition and adapting it, to fit our family. I am so excited. The Jesse Tree comes from Isaiah 11:1: "A shoot will spring forth from the stump of Jesse, and a branch out of his roots." The Branch is a biblical sign representing newness out of discouragement, and was a way to refer to the expected Messiah. Jesse was the father of David and flowing from this line is Jesus Christ, the Messiah. The ritual that comes along with this idea is to tell of God's Story and faithfulness and connecting it all the way up to the Advent Season (Advent by the way means arrival or coming - the arrival of the Lord)


This is what advent is all about. not simply a huge anticipation for December 25, and then that's it. While neither my family, nor KC's family has celebrated advent, we think that this will be a memorable and valuable. First of all, Colson's world has changed since we have started decorating our home for Christmas. His favorite thing to say right now is "what is that? What is this?" Christmas time has become a wonderful opportunity to teach Colson about God's story. For example, we put lights up in our living room and he loves them. He could tell you now that we put lights up to remember, because Jesus came into the world, and Jesus is the light of the world.

Thinking about God's wonderful story and preparing for our adaption of the Jesse Tree (which is simply part of our Christmas tree) has already made me more all around thankful: I think this will help tremendously when we are receiving gifts and partying on. A gift received in any spirit other than thanksgiving is everything we are trying to counter. We have no problem with gifts, and plenty of them, if they are given and received in a spirit of thanksgiving to our loved ones, and to our greatest gift: Christ. This is what we want to remember as Daddy and Mommy, and this is what we want our kids to remember when they're ripping open a new favorite fighter jet.