New Advent Traditions

I've talked a lot about what our domestic does and looks like during the Advent season - book baskets, advent wreath, tree decorating, and St. Nicholas Day and gifts of three. And O Antiphons! I love me some O Antiphons.

Oh and the Jesse Tree! How could I forget? As my oldest gets older, this simple [usually quiet, barring any meltdowns] before bed activity really means more and more. He gets exposure to stories and saints from the Old Testament and one day, he'll understand how they are all related to Jesus, just like his grandparents and tios are related to him. We have a chance to sing some Advent carols (ie. two. O Come, O Come and Come Thou, Long Expected Jesus because those are the only two I know) and have some family prayer time before bed.

He also really enjoyed his daily Advent Adventure and we were pretty faithful to the daily Advent Alphabet from O Night Divine Advent blog.

In addition, this year, I really wanted to focus on connecting the infant Christ child with Christmas as His birthday. Birthdays are for presents (which the kid definitely understands just fine), but for Jesus' birthday, He wants us to give presents to others.

So, we bought presents for a needy family. Then, we went through his toy room and talked about how there are little boys who don't have any toys and what could we give to them so they can have Christmas too. This went surprisingly well; a little resistance at first, but soon, I had to help, um, monitor, the giveaways so some confused kid didn't end up with a track, a block, a puzzle piece and whatnot.

Then, we participated in Toys for Tots for the first time and Boyo really latched right on to this. I told him that we had to go pick out some presents for the Baby Jesus at the Toy Store; we weren't going to get anything for us, but he could pick out anything he wanted to give away. What an awesomely rewarding charitable activity! It was so much *fun* picking out whatever toys we thought looked fun (I grabbed some girl stuff. You know, practicing) and then just giving them away. Definitely a keeper for next year.

I was so proud of him for truly enjoying the giving process and grateful to the Holy Spirit for filling his heart with all the right Gifts.