We've been busy filling up Santa's beard with cotton balls each day, you can download it here. His beard is about 1/2 grown. Each day my son wakes up, he asks- "Is Santa here, yet?" No. Not yet. Soon, though- when his beard is full, he'll be here.
I struggled this year with celebrating Santa this year at all, because that's not the real reason for the season- we celebrate Jesus' birth, that's why it's called Christmas. My son knows about Jesus and God, (His prayer before each meal is: "Thank you for our food, and thank you for Jesus and God. Amen.") and that's awesome, but it's the fact that Santa gives gifts and expects nothing in return allowed me to celebrate the 'fun' side of Christmas. Santa Claus is named after Saint Nicholas, who was a Saint in 4th Century A.D. I briefly read on Wikipedia about Saint Nicholas, it's quite interesting to see how many countries celebrate him, and how Santa Claus is loosely based on him. "Saint Nicholas is the patron saint of sailors, merchants, archers, thieves, children..."Our friends the Wigle's celebrate Christmas with a birthday cake for Jesus... how great is that? I know their two kids are going to grow up knowing the true meaning of Christmas!
I'm working on an Advent Calendar for next year- but I'm not sure what to put in the envelopes- they are tiny key-sized envelops. Chocolate? Bible Verse? Little representation of the story of Jesus' birth? What do you put in/on your Advent Calendars?
Merry Christmas from our family to yours,
great banner. we celebrate advent, but not with gifts or candy for each day - mainly because it's just more stuff. the story itself is important enough to look forward to each day. we also sorta-kinda do Santa, but not really. we didn't visit him last year, may or may not this year. no letters, etc. but we have books/movies about him - so we treat it like that, a good story.
ReplyDeletethanks for coming today!