Today marks day 1 of 25 Days of Christmas here at the Ashlee Proffitt blog! I am so excited about this advent season and celebrating Jesus’ birth with my family every.single.day!

I hope you’ll join me on our little adventure!

Each day I will post a passage from the Bible that points us to Jesus, His birth, His life and His sacrifice. My hope is that you will spend some time each day reading the passage and discussing with your family what it means and how it points to Jesus. A daily reminder of the true reason for this season.

Each day will also have a little activity to do with your family. The purpose of these activities is to experience this Christmas season with those that you love rather than rushing through it and subsequently missing the most important gifts that are right before you. Traditionally, advent calendars were used to increase the expectancy and excitement as you awaited the final day, the day that represents the birth of our Savior. I hope, this little calendar will do the same as you excitedly look forward to and complete each day’s activity.

The activities have been kept general so that you have the opportunity to make them work perfectly for your family. Each day I will be posting ideas for ways you can make the activity work for your family.

So go ahead! Decorate away! And remember do it with your family. Your little ones will not remember a magazine worthy decorating job, they will remember however, hanging lights on the tree with dad and stringing popcorn for garland with mom, picking out Christmas trees and hanging ornaments.

Ways to ‘Deck the Halls’ with your little ones (and a few other ideas to start this Advent Season):
+ Go pick out a Christmas tree
+ Or put up your artificial tree (because if you are like us, you have decided that real Christmas trees and the process involved is very difficult on your marriage ;))
+ Pull out all of your decorations and talk about the story behind each of the ornaments. Your little ones will love it when they see the ones they made in the past!
+ Put lights on the tree and let your littles help you untangle and test them. With each set of lights we tested my little ones would grin so big when they would light up!
+ Make your own garland out of popcorn, marshmallows, and/or cranberries.
+ Cover your tree with snow (i.e. cotton balls!)
+ Make a Paper Christmas Tree (let the littles pick out paper of their choice, making colorful trees they love and can put in their own room if they like)
+ These trees would be super cute to make too with fabric of your little ones choice (I’m envisioning Spiderman & the Avengers…)
+ Let each little one hang their own stocking & talk about the history of Christmas stockings (and other Christmas traditions as well.)
+ Tell your little ones about the real Saint Nicholas and the tradition of Santa Claus (A great article: What We Tell Our Kids About Santa)

I hope your day is filled with so much Christmas fun!!