An Advent calendar and Advent devotional will help you count the days to Christmas with anticipation and Christ-centered joy.
Advent Calendar
The Advent calendar is a delightful tradition for everyone in the family. The typical Advent calendar has small compartments or cubby holes with doors numbered 1 to 24. Each day of Advent, a new door is opened to reveal a toy, treat, poem, Bible verse, or anything else that might fit inside.
Why 24 days? Most commercially available Advent calendars have 24 numbered compartments for the 24 days of December leading up to Christmas. Of course, depending on the year, Advent may be less or more than 24 days. Count down the days however you want. For the years when Advent begins before December 1, you might wait until December 1 to open your first door, and when Advent begins on, say, December 2, start with the second door.
There's a stunning variety of Advent calendars, and recent years have seen an explosion in popularity. You’ll easily find an Advent calendar that fits your family’s unique personality, from uber-crafty, to kid-approved (like a Lego Advent calendar), to book-inspired (Polar Express and Harry Potter, to name just two).
Image credit: Vanessa Felie, Etsy shop
Advent Devotional
Pair your calendar tradition with an Advent devotional that stirs the imagination, awakens wonder, and enriches your family’s journey through the season.
Each day of Advent, read a Bible story about someone on Jesus’s family tree and hang an ornament symbolizing the story on your Jesse Tree. From Faithward.
We love Antonie Schneider’s series of 24 stories about Benjamin Bear’s journey to Bethlehem. The stories easily coordinate with a set of trinkets or ornaments in an Advent calendar.
Ann Voskamp’s classic deserves to be in any family’s Advent library. There are downloadable coloring pages and ornaments to accompany the readings.
Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas
Adults can delve into this ecumenical selection of devotional readings from writers such as Lewis, Bonhoeffer, Aquinas, L’Engle, Dorothy Day, Manning, and Yancey.