“Wonderful, that is just what we love to do.”

Our homeschool history club advisor was glad when the organizers of our town’s tree lighting ceremony finally called. It was someone different this year and we needed to know how long they wanted us to sing. For years, our group had gone caroling in historical costume to the businesses downtown, ending up at the Tree Lighting where we sang favorite Christ-honoring carols. It was a nice contrast to the groups from the local public schools that sang bland and irrelevant songs, like “Winter Nights, Winter Lights,” as if a mention that the lights were actually about celebrating Christmas would cause a Constitutional crisis.

“Do you have any favorites you’d like us to do? “Hark the Herald Angels Sing”? “Joy to the World”?” our dear advisor asked.

“Huh? No, we wanted you to sing traditional carols! Don’t you know any? You know, like “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Frosty the Snowman.”

We weren’t interested. There were any number of groups that could “celebrate” Christmas without reference to the birth of a Savior.

Has it really come to that? Have we let things slide to the point that Frosty and Rudolph are traditional carols and Joy to the World isn’t? May it never be! Here’s an excerpt from our newly released (which you can download), Christ-Centered Christmas, that shares how we preserve the tradition of trolling ancient carols…

Caroling Parties

Christmas is the only time of year that it is not only socially acceptable, but considered a gift to knock on stranger’s doors and sing hymns full of gospel truth to them! We don’t want this tradition to ever die out, so every year we invite like minded families to come caroling with us.

We invite a few families to come each time just after supper and we meet in our front yard so folks don’t have to remove their wraps. We try to have hymnals or the words to the carols we plan to sing copied for everyone. We walk around the neighborhood, knocking wherever we see lights. When people come to the door, we just begin singing. We do sing more than one verse of the carols because it’s often the middle verses that contain the most truth! We keep it to one or two carols per house, though, unless they seem really excited about us singing more. We end with “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” and shout, “Merry Christmas!” and leave.

What a blessing to be able to share the words of life with our neighbors so easily! When our voices give out, we return to our house for refreshments. We usually put on a spread like we do for Christmas Eve, but perhaps a little lighter, since folks have already had supper. This is one of our favorite times of the season!

Our local homeschool history club goes caroling downtown every year in historical costumes. Our whole town looks forward to it and talks about it. The past several years, they’ve been asked to do it on the eve of the town’s Christmas tree lighting and to come early and sing at the town’s ceremony and to perform at the Festival of Trees. What a delight to fill the air with praises to our Savior and in the form of songs that people associate with joy and happiness.

Take a look at those old Christmas hymns and read the words of those middle verses. What a privilege to share that with the world!

To find out more about Christ-Centered Christmas: The Ultimate Guide to Celebrating a Christmas Your Family Will Never Forget, click here, or just order below.

Learn about the events and the people surrounding the birth of Jesus. Your child will learn about Joseph, Mary, Caesar Augustus, Gabriel, Zachariah, Elizabeth, John the Baptist, Shepherds, Herod, Sheep, The Romans, The Wisemen, Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh and more! We included actual scripture from the Bible about all you see here and then on the next page explained about each event or person. Your child will learn so much and when he or she is through will have a beautiful lapbook to show.

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Christmas Lapbook and Study Guide

Snuggle up on the couch with the kids this holiday season and make the holidays exciting with this Christmas Lapbook with Study Guide. Lapbooks are fun for children of all ages and a great way to have hands-on fun! Discover family traditions, play Christmas trivia, answer questions about Santa’s reindeer, decorate a gingerbread man, make food for the reindeer to sprinkle on your lawn, write a letter to Santa and much, much more! Our Christmas lapbook is 3 folders chock full of Christmas surprises.

From A Journey Through Learning

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]]> http://www.raisingrealmen.com/2011/11/christmas-lapbook-study-guide/feed/ 56 http://www.raisingrealmen.com/2010/11/countdown-to-christmas-by-amy-puetz/ http://www.raisingrealmen.com/2010/11/countdown-to-christmas-by-amy-puetz/#comments Mon, 15 Nov 2010 16:34:17 +0000 Melanie http://www.raisingrealmen.com/?p=2202 Read More]]> A few years ago, we used the book Jotham’s Journey during the Advent season to build up anticipation for Christmas. The children loved it, so the next year, we used the sequel, Bartholomew’s Passage. That one seemed a bit more contrived to me, but it was still a lot of fun for the children and it forced us to sit down and spend time with the children each night of a very busy season — and if you aren’t using the holidays to pass on the real stories of what God has done to your children, why, you are missing a great deal of the point of holidays! When I saw Amy Puetz (pronounced Pitts) had a new book for the Advent season, I was dying to try it!

Countdown to Christmas: Memory Making Stories & Activities for Every Day from December 1st to the 25th has a story for each of those days leading up to Christmas. I loved them! The last two days are the Christmas story taken from Scripture. The stories are nearly all from the 1800s and early 1900s, so sometimes the language is a bit challenging, but we find our children don’t have any problem when we read aloud with expression and explain as necessary. There are some classic stories from beloved authors like Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women, Florence Kingsley, writer of several of the books Lamplighter has reprinted, and Margaret Sidney, of Five Little Peppers and How They Grew. Others have never been reprinted until now. I found them to be very good character-building stories and touching, as well. These stories will inspire some great conversations!

 Hal and I decided long ago that we would not do Santa Claus in our house, although I have quite happy memories of the practice as a child and even thought Santa was a theophany — an appearance of Christ. We just couldn’t imagine telling our children about someone who was omniscient, omnipotent (how else could he make toys for so many children) and omnipresent (or he couldn’t deliver toys to every child in the world over one night), then one day tell them, “Well, Santa’s not really real, but this other story, about a God who is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent, He’s real.” And the evidence for God isn’t even as obvious to a child as a room full of toys. So, I was very concerned to see if Countdown to Christmas would work for our family. I was very happy with it! There were a very few stories that concerned legends about Saint Nicholas or the Baboushka, but they were historical stories that I will feel very comfortable telling my children, “Listen to this old legend folks in Italy used to tell their children at Christmas.”

More Than Stories

Countdown to Christmas has a lot more than stories, though! Each day has carols, or quizzes, or riddles, or crafts, or recipes! I really liked that there was a recipe for a traditional pudding when there was a pudding story, because that is the first thing my guys would ask, “What is that like? Can we make some?” One day had traditional children’s games from the time period. I was intrigued; these were things I had heard about in my reading of period books, but I didn’t know what they were referring to. Again, my children will love this.  

The crafts ranged from the quite easy to the pretty difficult, so some will appeal to children of one age and others another. I liked that that there wasn’t too much to do any one day. Sometimes I hesitate to start something with my children because I know we won’t be able to keep it up, but Amy makes it very plain that you can pick and choose and substitute as you like. Altogether, there’s just a nice mixture of activities – active and quiet, crafts and games, paper activities and cooking. I think we’ll like it a lot and our family is looking forward to starting it December 1st!

I really like that it starts December 1st, too. Every year, I am so busy getting ready for Thanksgiving, that it’s not until Thanksgiving is over that I start thinking about Christmas. Well, by the time my attention turns that direction, I’m already late in starting many of the Advent programs. Arrgghh! Starting late is no way to reduce stress! Amy’s book lets us get done with Thanksgiving, then turn calmly to preparation for Christmas.

A Great Deal!

If, like me, you are excited to find something that’s not just fun, but enriches your children’s hearts and minds in the Advent season, I encourage you to head out to Amy Puetz’s website and order a copy right now! Amy says that if you order it by Wednesday, you can be sure to have it in time to start on the 1st! And… Amy has graciously offered us a discount code to get 20% off! You can use the discount code C2CAmy to get $5 off this terrific resource!

I want to be sure to mention, too, that Amy Puetz is a homeschool graduate herself and has tons of great resources at her site. As the mother of now two little girls in addition to my six growing men, I am completely intrigued by her Costumes with Character book and I’ll be doing a full review of it soon. If you have girls that want to dress up historically, check out this great concept! And a bonus! Amy said the C2CAmy discount code will work on this book, too!

Countdown to Christmas: Memory Making Stories & Activities for Every Day from December 1st to the 25th, Amy Puetz, A to Z Designs, 2010, 152 pages. Read a sample chapter here. Order from AmyPuetz.com.

We received a free copy of this book in exchange for our always honest review.

They went with my blessing for the same reason we had a caroling party the day after Hal had a cancer biopsy. Satan has a modus operandi he frequently uses on young people: “Christianity is boring. You won’t have any fun. You’ll never find a mate. People will think you’re weird.” Those are all lies. I remember when I was in rebellion as a teen one night the Lord revealed to me that I had believed a lie. I remember being at a party and looking in the mirror. I had a big smile on my face and looked like I was having a great time. Really I was miserable. Unhappy. Feeling guilty. Sad. I looked around me at the other people there and suddenly saw that they were all wearing masks, pretending to have a good time while all the while feeling insecure, worried, unhappy. I wanted to run out of there and I decided I never wanted to “wear a mask” again. Wasn’t there real fun somewhere – relaxed, happy, at peace… righteous?

“Yes there is!” I discovered in college when I got involved with a serious group of Christians. We can have a much better time than the world when we let go of the world’s expectations and behave like believers. As our sons have moved out into the world, they have been surprised to find that many Christians haven’t learned that yet. One of our sons found that the main entertainment for Christians at his college is to go to frat parties, but just not drink or hook up. They don’t seem to realize that Christians can have fun without aping the world. I think of them as “World Light” or “Diet World”! You can pretend you’re having the real thing, but not feel guilty! Lame.

Our guys know better because we have worked really hard to make sure they have had lots of good, clean fun. They know how much more fun it is to have a party without alcohol, but with lots of fellowship, congenial conversation, even singing and games. No guilt. No walk of shame. Like our caroling party. Let me tell you about it.

We invited several families over to go caroling with us. We ended up with 26 young people and about 10 adults. Those not recovering from surgery or pneumonia took off caroling. They started off several blocks away at the Auge’s house – they aren’t getting out much because their 3 year old Bobby is being treated for leukemia. How Bobby enjoyed their singing!. They caroled back to our house, stopping wherever lights were on to sing, chatting and visiting, caring for younger siblings, laughing about the cold. When they got back to our house, everyone grabbed some hot Christmas tea and served themselves a plate of finger food.

For hours that evening, we talked and visited, played games like Catch Phrase, sang, ate great food, prayed together, and cut up. By the end, we were uproariously singing favorite Gilbert & Sullivan songs. It was a blast. Everyone had a great time and it didn’t break up until the wee hours. We built memories. Memories of social events without sin, without guilt, without shame. Fellowship. Food. Joy and Laughter. Fun. All in the presence of our King.

That’s one thing we want our children to take with them as they leave our home: the knowledge that joy and happiness are found in the service of the King, not in the spiritual anesthetic of alcohol. It’s worth staying home and praying for their safety. It’s worth having a party the day after a biopsy!

We’ve done that now for over twenty years. The day we decorate the tree is greatly anticipated in our home. I serve party foods instead of dinner; things like meatballs and cheese ball with crackers, chips and dip, and eggnog. Eggnog is a favorite in our house (non-alcoholic and generally diluted with milk) and the day we decorate the tree is the first time we drink eggnog in the season. My favorite time is when the youngest child sees the tree come in the house. The look of awe is delightful! “Dad’s bringing a tree in the house! What in the world?” their eyes seem to say.

We take time to remind our children that the use of a Christmas tree is not described in Scripture, but it is one way we can show our joy in God’s gift of Jesus Christ to us and remind ourselves of what He has done for us. The fresh evergreen reminds us of eternal life, that there is coming a time when death shall be no more. The lights remind us that Jesus is the light of the world.

Each year as we decorate the tree, we tell the stories behind each ornament. When we unpack the blown glass cornucopias, we tell our children about the year that Hal had been laid off and God’s abundant provision for us. The little Wright flyers remind us of the year our family made a movie about the Wright Brothers and the director’s clapboards of the year our boys’ films did so well in competition. The tiny life jackets remind us of the year we spent weeks at the Lake since Hal was now self-employed and could work from anywhere. The ornaments that others have given us enable us to talk about them and their roles in our lives as well. As we unpack each ornament and place it on the tree, God’s incredible blessings to our family, in hard times and in good, become obvious to all of us. Decades of memories hang on our tree.