Tip 3-Don’t save all the fun for Christmas day.

Christmas can be anti climatic for children. Make things fun along the way.They are taught that this big glorious day is coming when Jesus will be born in a manger. There’s a tree with presents. Dinners. Rushing around. The schedule is upset. Kids are cranky.

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Cramming everything into one day is just too much. Spread out the fun.

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Get some Christmas books. Read them for bedtime stories all month. Go ice skating. Make a snowman. Have some regular old board game fun on a weekday afternoon.

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Biblical Application:

The first book of the New Testament begins with a genealogy. That’s pretty significant. Creating a genealogy has been a fun holiday exercise at our house. We have used the whiteboard to map out the family for family, friends and children who weren’t sure how we all fit together. It is kind of saying “this is where you fit in or this is where you came in” like the old movie pictures when you showed up at any time. For the Jews, it was a review, sort of like the first month of two of school after break when you have to backtrack. Jews-this is where you came from, remember. It’s a giant genealogy puzzle and here’s where Jesus comes on the scene.

And let me point out, in case you missed it, Joseph, the carpenter, husband of virgin Mary is listed as the Father of Jesus, Son of God. Joseph is the perfect picture of what adoption means to God, the Father. Not a drop of blood or string of DNA.

“Joseph serves as a model to follow as we see what’s at stake in the issue of adoption. Joseph, after all is an adoptive father. In some ways, his situation is, of course, far different from that any reader holding this book right now. In other ways, though Joseph’s mission belongs to all of us” -Russell Moore