The Advent Season in Your Family

Description: Tips for enjoying and reflecting with your family during the advent season.

With the joys of the holidays come stress, fatigue, and sometimes frustrated feelings of inadequacy. There's just too much to be done and so little time in which to do it all!

From a practical viewpoint, there's the list-making, the shopping, the baking, and the cleaning. Then there's the decorating, the unpacking of cherished Christmas ornaments, and trying to find the one bulb that's keeping the rest from lighting. We also open our hearts to loved ones that we rarely see or with whom we rarely correspond. The cards go out, we make long-distance phone calls, and we send the most recent school photos to out-of-town relatives. It's so easy to lose track of where else our hearts should be during this most blessed season.

Advent is a time of waiting and anticipation, not just for family to arrive or gifts to be opened, but for the peace that the newborn Christ brings.

It's a time of preparing, not just our homes, but our hearts. Also, it's a time of finding beauty in things like quiet starry nights, much like we imagine was the case the night Jesus was laid in the manger.

An incredible thing happens on Christmas. God connects to us in human form by sending His Son as flesh. What a miracle! And, what a time for personal reflection...individually, and as families.

As we approach the end of the calendar year, we start to think about our New Year's resolutions. Sometimes, this is a source of humor for many of us, as we know ourselves well enough to know what we're truly capable of in terms of changing our habits. But what if we thought about some Advent resolutions? These could be simple ideas to keep our minds on the task at hand; welcoming Jesus into our homes and our hearts. Perhaps those resolutions might look something like this:

+ This Advent, I will take people at their word when they say they want nothing for Christmas but my love or my time. I will give them just that.

+ I will spend some time each week with no TV, no phone, and no computer during the Advent season. This time will be spent with my family, in the quiet and peace of our home, illuminated by the lights from our Christmas tree. We can do whatever the mood strikes in us, whether it's reading our family Bible together (Luke 2:10 is a lovely story to read at Christmastime!), praying a prayer of thanksgiving for our rich blessings, or talking about how it might have been for Mary and Joseph the night Jesus was born in the inn.

+ I will do my best to take time with the Advent wreath each Sunday, and teach my children how to reverently light the candles.

+ Most of all, I will not put pressure on myself to do all these things "perfectly." I am human, I am a parent, and I have a lot of responsibilities. What I will do is pray that God helps me to use my time and my resources to praise Him and to teach my family to do the same. I will pray that God helps me to keep in my heart the spirit of Christmas, even when the secular stresses of the season threaten to bear down on me too heavily. If we miss a Sunday with the Advent wreath, I will make sure we take a little time the next evening, and I will peacefully ask God to accept our prayers while we light the candles.

Aside from these resolutions, perhaps you can come up with new traditions to start, based on some things that stand out in your mind from when you were a child. One of the most peaceful memories I have of Christmas as a child is going to midnight mass with my whole family. We would all string across one pew, dressed in our finery, looking at the glorious poinsettias on the altar, and listening to the choir performing at its very best. This memory didn't start with a gift-wrapped box, and nobody bought it from a store. It didn't cost anything, nor could it be found under our tree. But it encapsulated the meaning of Christmas for me, and it still pulls at my heartstrings when I recall the feeling of joy I had each year, sitting amongst my brothers and sisters and parents.

If you have memories such as this, cherish them and build on them, if you can. Recall that peace that you had as you move through Advent toward the birthday of our Lord. Hopefully in doing so, you will carry the peace in your heart and reflect it to those whom you love, too.

Mia Cronan is an at-home mother of five children, ages 11, 9, 7, 5, and 2, living in northeast Ohio. She owns and edits http://www.MainStreetMom.com, the magazine for modern mothers with traditional values. Mia can be reached at mia@mainstreetmom.com. MainStreetMom.com is the flagship site of http://EMCWebs.com.

Comment on this article or submit your tip to CreativeHomemaking.com.
Click here for a printer friendly version of this page.
Receive new article links via the Web, SMS, or instant messages via Twitter!
Recommend this article to a friend!
Search our article archives.
Click here to subscribe to our weekly newsletter.

Sponsor: FamilyStickers.com offers one of the largest selections of family stickers, family car decals, and stick family stickers. These easy to apply vinyl window family car stickers are available in several themes and sizes or customized to your request.