Thanksgiving is on it's way and that only means that Christmas is right on our heals. Halloween may have stumped us, but for Christmas I'm just oozing with ideas for traditions for our little family. My favorite idea is the Jesse Tree! This seems like such a great way to teach our children about advent. I love the season of preparing our hearts to receive Christ.
For a Jesse Tree you read an Old Testament story every day of December building up to Christmas. Each story leads up to the birth of Christ and has a corresponding ornament you place on the tree. The "tree" idea comes from Isiah 11:1, "A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit."
The hope is that our kids will look forward to the excitement of placing a new ornament on the tree each night, and Steven and I will look forward to sharing with our children all that God did to prepare the world for the best gift of all!
The are soooo soooo many ideas online for setting up a Jesse Tree. Here are just a few.
First, here is a pretty detailed explanation of the Jesse Tree and a chart (at the bottom of the page) of the readings and symbols. This is a great reference for establishing the tradition.
This blog is my favorite so far. It seems like last year she was almost done perfecting her tree, so maybe this year she will have some more ideas. Her ornaments are really nice and coordinate well. I also LOVE the idea of the bags under the tree, just like little presents. This is kinda my "goal."
This blog is less matchy-matchy, but still quite solid. She reads from the Big Picture Story Bible for their daily reading... convenient, we already read out of that book!
I don't quite have time to get everything together for a well coordinated tree. I think for this year it may be some paper symbols I print on card stock, color and string up on a ribbon. John won't have a memory of the ornaments so I still have some grace time.
I'm kinda undecided whether I'll buy (and slightly modify) the ornament or make them. All I know is that I want them to coordinate and look nice. And of course they have to be durable because we have a little boy who will be doing the "placing" of the ornaments. If I decide to buy them, I'll hit up some after Christmas sales to find the nicer ornaments. I will just swap out the paper copies as I find or make better replacements.
I'll probably start with this website. They have good printable symbols, but I don't think John will get much out of the devotions, yet. So, we will probably use this website as our reading guide. I'm thinking we will read the story out of The Big Picture for John, place the ornament and put him in bed. After he's down, Steven and I can go back and read the parental devotion. I hope it works out that easy...
Anyway, there are, of course, a plethora of ideas on the world wide web... and now it's just a matter of deciding on a permanent option and establishing a tradition. My goal for this month is to get the symbols printed and colored. And to print out all devotions to read. That should be a good enough start for this year.
Happy Tradition Making!
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