Advent and Christmas is such a busy time of year! Yet is also a great time to talk about faith at home. This post will share some ideas about adding faith practices into the rituals & traditions you already have everyday and especially during the Advent/Christmas season.

What is Advent?

The season of Advent starts 4 Sundays before Christmas, so this year it begins this Sunday 29 November. Advent finishes on Christmas Eve when the season of Christmas begins.

Advent is a time when we prepare for the arrival of Jesus. Not do we prepare to celebrate His arrival as a baby over 2000 years ago but as we also prepare for His return. Advent is derived from the latin root “adventus” and means “coming”.

Adding Faith Practices to your Advent Traditions

Existing Everyday & Advent Rituals

Think about some of the everyday activities that happen during Advent or Christmas. These might be activities that happen everyday whether or not it’s Advent or Christmas. Things such as eating meals together, driving to school or to the shops, bedtime stories. Also think about the special Advent/Christmas rituals and traditions that you have? Things such as putting up the Christmas tree and decorations, going to view Christmas light displays, advent calendars, special meals etc.

What Faith Practice Can You Add?

Once you’ve listed, thought about or discussed your current everyday & advent rituals: Think, pray and discuss how you can add a faith element into one of these things or how you can point your children/each other to Jesus?

For example my kids had a bedtime story when they were younger. During Advent we read a special advent story which had a chapter a night and led up to the birth of Jesus. Also, we’ve always had the tradition of eating bacon and eggs for breakfast on Christmas Day. After reading the book My Birthday, Jesus’ Birthday where they talk about having a birthday cake for Jesus, we started singing happy birthday to Jesus and having birthday cake for breakfast with our bacon & eggs, on Christmas Day.

More Ideas for Adding Faith Practices

Those are just a couple of ideas. There is more of an explanation and plenty of ideas on the video below.

Some of the Links & Resources Mentioned in the Video

Here’s the links to some of the posts & ideas that I mention in the video:

• Advent Ideas for Families
• Advent Ideas for households
• Our Advent Calendar
• Christmas Activity & Reflection Ideas
• Praying with Christmas cards
• Ideas for Celebrating Epiphany

And a few of the books I mention

• Exciting stories for Advent
• Unwrapping the Greatest Gift
• Twas the Evening of Christmas
• Wombat Divine
• The Nativity
• Faithful Families for Advent & Christmas
• The Season of the Nativity

If you’d like a copy of the handout that went with the workshop fill in the form below. The handout contains links to everything mentioned in the video.

What Faith Practice will you add?

What faith practices do you do for Advent or Christmas? Or what faith practice might you add to your Advent/Christmas this year?

Disclosure: This post contains some affiliate links. If you click on one of these links and make a purchase, I’ll receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.