"By focusing on your loved ones, enjoying or building holiday traditions, and following the Savior's example of service, you can give yourself and your family true, lasting Christmas gifts." (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints)
We have a lot of Christmas traditions but this is one of my favorites. On the first day of December, we read this story and then each person draws a name to perform secret service acts on during that week. We add one piece of straw to the wooden manger for each act of service with the goal of making a soft place for Jesus (from our nativity set) to sleep on Christmas Eve.
Hadley drew Ryan's name the first week and went down to his room when he wasn't paying attention. She came upstairs and was worried, "I turned down Ryan's bed for him to go to sleep tonight but now it just looks like I un-made his bed and he won't know I did it to be nice." We had a great idea of putting this note on his pillow.
"Turn Down Service" quickly became the favorite service activity of the season. It gave us a good laugh as we went to bed every night to see our bed already turned down for us. Next year we'll need to make it even better by adding a mint to every pillow.
The wooden manger with Jesus under the tree on Christmas
4 comments:
I have loved reading your blog each day and all of your wonderful traditions. Not to put any pressure on you, but I will be checking often to see your updates.
We have a small manger and straw that we bring out in December also. Only we don't draw names, we just put a straw in anytime we serve someone else. This year we'd used up all the straw by December 20th. Our best year yet!
V--our manger was not very full this year. We definitely could have stepped it up a notch on the service and straw-filling abilities. I also chose to leave off the fact that poor baby Jesus got trampled over when the kids ran for their presents on Christmas morning. Congrats on your best year for filling the manger!
OK I think you should be NAMED SUPER MOM of the YEAR!! I love the little Manger. We have one like it but need to impliment it better at Christmas than just put it out. All of your activities you did with yours kids during Christmas just wears me out. I don't know how you do it with six kids and all the fun activities you do. YOu are a great MOM! So I nominate you SUPER MOM of the YEAR!
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