Three Kings Day...

In Latin America, the Epiphany celebration is called Three Kings Day. Although the exact tradition varies from country to country, what remains the same is the idea that the Three Kings visit children on the eve of Epiphany, bringing the good children candy and toys, while naughty children get dirt or coal. In some countries, children place boxes of hay or straw under their beds as a treat for the Kings' horses as they travel from house to house.

Earlier this week Walmart announced that the Three Kings would visit their stores in certain areas. Walmart is stocking toys for the holiday and children who shop at those participating Walmart stores will be able to have their pictures taken with the Three Kings on Janurary 3rd and 4th.

Not only is Walmart celebrating Three Kings Day, but Nickelodeon is premiering a special Three Kings Day episode of Dora the Explorer on Tuesday night, January 6th.

To read more about Three Kings Day, check out these sites:

~Three Kings Day in Puerto Rico

~Three Kings Day Traditions

~Dora's Three Kings Party

The other Christmas Book...

Of course THE Christmas Book that is the guide for the whole celebration is the Bible. You really don't need any other book to make Christmas happen. Meditating on God's Word and letting it dwell richly in your heart is the key to the most successful of all Christmas celebrations. And if you'll carry that habit with you into the new year, you'll find yourself not only celebrating Christ's birth, but you'll catch yourself celebrating the joy of knowing Jesus each and every day.

AFTER the Bible, the book that I find most helpful for the holiday season is The Christmas Book. You see, our church's women's ministry hosts a wonderful event early in November each year. It features breakfast, a devotional talk, wonderful music, and workshops designed to help women prepare their hearts and homes for the holiday season that goes from Thanksgiving through Christmas.

At that event one year, I had the blessing of attending a seminar by an amazing woman of God name Debby. She is an interior designer and hostess extraordinaire. Although I learned enough to keep me busy for years to come, the one take-away that I went home and implemented immediately was The Christmas Book. Think of it as Holiday Headquarters.

Here is my Christmas Book. It is a two-inch, three-ring binder. The cover is courtesy of my youngest child.

Inside, The Christmas Book has dividers separating the different sections. The pages in each section are secured in page protectors to keep them safe and clean.

Here are two pages from the Advent section. Under Advent, we keep printouts of the Advent verses we use from year to year.

And here is a print out of Jesse tree symbols used as a kids' craft.

The recipe section holds ALL the recipes for the entire season, from Thanksgiving favorites to our Christmas Eve chili dinner to our Christmas Day Big Family Meal. Christmas cookie recipes, quick and easy meals for the hectic December schedule and actual menu plans are included in the recipe section too. As Debby pointed out in the workshop, if you go ahead and plan your meals from Thanksgiving through Christmas ahead of time, you can take advantage of the sales and shop very economically. Choosing your cookie recipes well in advance allows you to plan for teacher and neighbor presents as well as entertaining.

One of my favorite sections is the gifts section. I keep our master Christmas list in here each year... the list of who got what and our gift-giving budget. I write down teacher gifts and neighbor gifts and the years that we make those gifts, I snap a picture to remember what we did. But my favorite part of the gift section is the kids' Christmas lists that they wrote themselves. Such treasures!

All those Christmas workshops yield a wealth of ideas, so I have a section devoted to notes from that women's ministry event, as well as articles I find in magazines or online that deal with organizing and planning and strategies to keep Christ in the center of Christmas.

We have a section for Christmas cards and letters, where we have placed a copy of each letter we've sent out and each card. We keep printouts of names and addresses of people to whom we send cards. This year, we started a new tradition and put the Christmas letter on our family blog. I'll print it out and put it in the book too.

An entertaining section holds copies of party invitations and plans for gatherings we've hosted and attended. Plus some ideas we'd love to try in the future.

The final official section is for decorating and crafts. It holds pictures and directions that we've found in magazines as well as photos we've taken while out and about during the holiday season. It is our headquarters for future creative plans and our handbook for "how we did that" so we can do it again in years to come.

The Christmas Book allows me to be purposeful during the holidays. When I plan well, I have time to spend in fellowship with my sweet Savior and time to enjoy my family and friends.

I even have secret plans for the plan book. Since The Christmas Book is as much a history book as an organizational tool, I have all our family traditions from devotions to recipes to parties in one place. When my daughter marries, I'll give her a Christmas Book of her very own, complete with copies of the devotionals and recipes we've used over the years. She and her husband will make their own traditions, but she will carry to her new home a legacy from her family. While I'm at it, I think I'll make a couple more for my daughters-in-law too.

Friends' Brunch ... by Melanie

One of my favorite traditions for the last 15 years has been the Friends' Brunch. Having been in a Bible study that had fellowships which encouraged sharing what we had learned and how we had been changed by studying God's Word together, I was struck by the richness of fellowship with women that I didn't even know that well. I thought what a blessing it would be to have that kind of sharing with friends with whom I had a history, but didn't get to see as often during the year. That began the tradition of gathering friends (new and old) for a brunch in the weeks before Christmas to focus on Christ.

At the brunch, everyone has an opportunity to share specifically a lesson the Lord has taught them over the past year. After we eat, there is a spiritual prompt for sharing, such as,

*What has God taught you about Himself this year?
*What atribute of God has been most precious to you this year and why?
*How had He encouraged you through His Word?

Each year, it is an encouragement to hear ones so dear share of God's sovereignty and faithfulness in joys and in sorrows.

In the first years I cooked all of the food, used the fine china and silver... but now many bring a dish to share. The sharing time is more important than the food---but the food is always good! Who doesn't love a brunch?!

Each year I pray for some visual reminder that each woman attending can take home with her -- sometimes it's a verse on a pretty card or bookmark. One year we made attribute ornaments together. One of the first years we each wrote down on a piece of paper what we were giving to Jesus for His birthday that year. Each of us had a small box and we used those scraps of wrapping paper (that never fit anything you wrap, but you still don't' want to throw them away) to wrap our gift to Jesus to put under the tree or in a place that it would be seen to serve as a reminder that we are celebrating Jesus. Each year God is faithful to bring to mind some little goodie that points us all to Jesus to share with each of those who come.

As we focus on Him, we are all encouraged.

Christmas Traditions ... by Tina

Here are a few things we have done over the years to celebrate Christmas...

On Christmas Eve, our family usually goes out for an early dinner around 4:00pm (there have been times when we just had a special dinner at home). Most years we invite another family to join us to celebrate the evening. After dinner we go to the 6:00 Love Feast service. After the service our family goes home for the kids to open one small gift which is usually pajamas, house shoes or something fun for the kids to do that evening.

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Occasionally my extended family will come for Christmas. Last year, my mom and dad were here and they gave each of the kids a new Bible for Christmas. My husband, Steve, did something very special... he asked my dad to pray a special blessing over the kids. He had the kids get on their knees in front of them and my dad laid his hands on them and said a prayer of blessing for each of them. Although it was a little awkward for the kids, it was a very precious moment for me and I pray that our kids will always be grateful and remember their Christian heritage.

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One of our annual traditions -- that I routinely vow to start earlier on or not do the following year -- is our family Christmas letter. In the beginning I would do a separate letter for family and friends, church staff, and youth workers. That idea quickly dissolved after a few years -- especially after we moved a few times and our mailing list grew -- and it has become one compiled letter for the masses. My current mailing list is more than 200 recipients... so now that the kids are older we have brought them in to help with the assembly. It has been written using different themes... simple holiday greetings from our house to yours, more elaborate letters including a page of pictures, a year of firsts for our family, special memories of the previous year, a letter written by our kids, and then there was that one year ... when I had a great idea of writing about the "Twelve Months before Christmas," which included pictures. It ended up being five pages long!!! Can you imagine us printing and stapling 1,000 pages, not to mention addressing and stamping all those letters? After that year, we have gone to one page letters and one Christmas card photo. Seriously, the annual letters have really become a highlight for our family (now having to be approved by our three teenagers before sending out) as they record a little family history about each year. We've been told by family and friends that we don't see often that they love keeping up with our family through our Christmas letter.

Photography by Heather for this post...

Christmas Eve Book Dinner ... by Ivy

I do not recall what year this family tradition of ours officially started, but since it has we have not missed one year. My parents were both educators and were the entire time I was growing up. My father was a high school teacher teaching several subjects including English, Poetry, American Literature, Biology, Chemistry, Enrichment, and yes the list does go on, believe it or not. If you are wondering... no, never play Trivial Pursuit with the man because you WILL lose. My sister-in-law while she was living with us for a short time challenged him every night for I think a month and still never beat him. Probably the closest anyone HAD come but it still didn't happen.

Anyway, my mother was an elementary teacher teaching 1st, 2nd, 4th and 5th. She taught 1st grade the longest and that was truly her favorite age. I say they did teach, as in past tense, because my mom is currently an elementary school principal and my dad is an Instructional Facilitator for the high school.

Okay on with the tradition... since our family was absorbed in education, every year for Christmas my parents would end up buying everyone a book. Somehow (I was too little so I don't remember exactly how) we ended up unwrapping these on Christmas Eve instead of waiting until Christmas morning. I think because we really wanted to open something and my dad usually wanted his book so he could stay up reading it Christmas Eve night waiting for us kids to go to bed so he could put out all our toys! However it happened, my mom would wrap up the books and place them on our plates for our Christmas Eve Dinner. This was a big deal - the good dishes, candlelight, the works! And before dinner we would open our books, ooh and ahh and flip through them, reading the beginning to perk our interest, and then we would have to put them aside while my dad read from THE BOOK: the Bible. My dad would read the Christmas story from one of the gospels (we would mix it up every year) while the rest of us took the Nativity pieces and the first mention of the name of the character we had we would place them in the middle of the table in its right spot! Once books were opened and THE Book was read, then dinner would officially begin! My request was always Cherry Glazed Ham, yum yum!!

Even though both my brother and I are both grown and have families of our own we ALL still do the Christmas Eve Book Dinner!

Photography by Heather for this post...

Collections as traditions...

My cousin, Barbara, has a Santa collection that would rival anything you've seen in a museum. I"m not talking a mantle full of the jolly ol' elf. I'm talking about house full, with every surface imaginable hosting its own special Santa. She is a collector extraordinaire.

I have to say that I LOVE it when I know people collect a certain type of Christmas-themed objects. It makes gift-giving so much easier.

After hearing from many of you, I realize that those of you who are moms and grandmas and aunts are busy building tree ornament collections for the little ones in the family. We are doing the same. Our tree will be virtually bare once everyone gets married and establishes their own family traditions. On the other hand, their trees will be packed, so they will start their families with traditions in place.

Here is a quick tour of our family's ornament tradition...

Each child in the family has a
Precious Moments First Christmas ornament hanging on our tree.

Our oldest child collects pig Christmas tree ornaments.

Our second child plays football, so each Christmas,
he gets a football ornament.

Our youngest was a Thomas the Tank Engine maniac when he was small. We've decided to keep building that collection in tree ornaments so that he can share it with his children one day.

We write each child's initials and the year on the ornaments to help everyone remember who got what when.

While decorating the tree is distinctly a family affair, the job of taking it down belongs solely to Mom. So when I start untrimming the tree after January 6th, I take the opportunity to pray for my kids as I carefully pack away their ornaments until next Christmas. I pray for them-- for their relationship with the Lord, for their future spouses and children, for their ministries, for anything that the Lord brings to mind during that time. As only the Lord can do, He takes what I would normally see as drudgery and makes it into a beautiful opportunity to spend time worshipping Him and covering my children in prayer. What a blessing!

Family Traditions - Part 3 ... by Karen D.

My in-laws host our family every Christmas for lunch. There are certain things that are traditional and make Christmas with them very special. We always have hot apple cider, ambrosia (a recipe passed down from my mother-in-law's mother), electric bells ringing on the front porch when we walk up to the house, and a Christmas pageant starring all the grandchildren. Even though the oldest grandchildren are teenagers and you would expect their enthusiasm to wane, they are eager to participate. They look forward to dressing up, playing their roles, and reading the story of Jesus' birth from Luke.

Family Traditions - Part 2 ... by Karen D.

Another of our family traditions is watching "A Charlie Brown Christmas" together. We make it our own by adding homemade hot chocolate and popcorn. Let's not forget pajamas and blankets spread on the floor in front of the TV.

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How about luminaries? Our neighborhood does them every year, but according to tradition, only the men in our family set them out and light them. Then as a family, we drive through the neighborhood to "Ooooh" and "Aaaahhh."

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We have seven children. Christmas morning is a little chaotic with seven children. Years ago, my husband and I decided that we needed a plan to keep the children from running wildly down the stairs and ruining the surprise before we had a chance to yawn, stretch and rise out of the fog of sleepiness. Here is our plan: the children are instructed the night before that they are not to get out of their beds when they wake up. Instead, they can sit up and begin singing a carol of their choice. As others wake, they join in. When we are awake, we call them to our room and all nine of us sit on the bed and listen to Daddy read Jesus' birthday story. This is followed by agonizing stalling techniques by Dad and Mom. We hav eto brush out teech, find out socks, use the bathroom, fuss with our hair, etc. All the while the hcildren are giggling, moaning, and jumping up and down with anticipation.

What are your family traditions? Which new ones are you going to start this year?

Family Traditions - Part 1 ... by Karen D.

Every year before the Christmas season can truly begin, there is one thing that MUST happen. My mom and I share a box of chocolate-covered cherries. We savor the ooey-gooey-ness of them and recognize this as the official start of the merriment. By the way, they must be the kind with the white cream surrounding the cherry, not just the liquid. If you enjoy chocolate-covered cherries the way I do, you will understand the importance of this seemingly small detail

This is a small family tradition we enjoy. It takes almost no time, energy, or money, but it is very important. That's the way traditions work. Sometimes they just happen over time and you never really realize when they sneak up on you and become a part of who you are. Other times traditions must be deliberate and intentional. Allow yourself and your family to be overtaken by those surprise traditions but also be willing to be deliberate about others.

In order to get the creative juices flowing, here are a few of our family traditions. May they be a jumping off place for you. Please inspire us with yours also. If it's too long to post in a comment or you have a picture to go with it, email it to CelebratingChristmas@gmail.com.

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~The Vest Tradition~

I was a teenager helping my mom clean out her closet. I held up a black vest and assumed she was ready to trash it. She refused to throw is out; after all, "It will probably come back in style." In my authentic 1980's lingo, I replied, "Gross me out! This has NEVER been in style, Mom!"

I thought I had seen the last of that hideous black vest with the black-and-tan-checked lining. You can imagine my shock when I opened my first Christmas present of the morning and discovered the black vest neatly folded in the tissue paper. AARGH! We all had a hearty laugh and I quietly tucked the vest away.

Every year the black vest makes an appearance under the Christmas tree. We never know who might open it, but we DO know who has had it. Our tradition is to mark it before passing it to the next victim. Sometimes we add a button, sometimes a pin, simetimes an applique, but always the name and date of the last recipient. We now have a rich history on that black vest. That ugly vest is a beautiful tradition.

Survey says...

What makes it feel most like Christmas to you?

#1 answer - Spending time with family
#2 answer - Listening to Christmas music
#3 answer - Decorating the Christmas tree

Thanks for sharing!

Counting down by the book ... by Jen

We LOVE Christmas traditions! One that we all enjoy is unwrapping a Christmas book every night of December. I wrap up 23 different books, the same ones every year, and put them in a basket. Each night the boys take turns opening one up and then my husband or I read it to them. They look forward to it every year. On Christmas Eve, my husband reads The Night Before Christmas and The Christmas Story from the book of Luke. Great memories!

Here is our basket of books!

Here is the first book!

We added a new tradition this year, it was our oldest son's idea. We are singing a different carol each night. He went online and printed out the lyrics for all of us. Though we couldn't sing in a concert hall or anything, it was a sweet, sweet sound!

May you all enjoy your Christmas traditions!

Christmas = Busy! ... by Shannon

For many of us, the Christmas season = BUSY! This means we have to be intentional to keep all the clutter – the parties, the traveling, and, yes, even the presents – from obscuring the purpose for our celebrations, travels, and gift-giving. Often Christ, the One who is central to Christmas, becomes secondary to all the extras.

My husband Lee and I have only been married for three-and-a-half years, but we've already seen this busy-ness plague infect our celebrations. As we prepared to celebrate our first Christmas as a family of three last year, we asked for God's guidance to keep the Christmas season from becoming all about the trimmings. We decided that we would intentionally set aside Christmas morning as our sacred family time. No company (not even grandparents), no traveling, not even any telephone calls or Internet. We explained to our families that we're open to joining them for celebrations the weekend before or after Christmas Day and that they're welcome to join us in the afternoon on Christmas Day if they'd like to … but Christmas morning is off limits. It hasn't always been the most popular decision, but we knew it was the right one for us. As we prepare to welcome our second child to this world this coming Easter, it's refreshing to know that we won't have to juggle traveling with a baby and toddler on Christmas Day 2009!

I don't expect this to be the answer for every family to find some calm in the midst of the Christmas season, but it works for us. What works for your family? We are still relatively newlyweds, so I would love it if you could leave a comment with ways that you keep Christ central to your celebrations in the midst of the busy season!