Since it’s the day after Halloween, let’s talk about Christmas! I know, I know, it’s early. But I got to do something really fun last weekend, and if I tell you about it now, you might have time to pull something similar together before December 1.
My friend Hanna called me a couple of weeks ago, excited about an idea. She wanted to make a Jesse tree for her family to use for advent, and she wondered if other gals might want to do the same. “We could do it like a cookie exchange!” she said. “Only we’d have ornaments to keep forever!”
Here’s how it worked: Hanna found a group of ladies who were interested and found a date when we could have our ornament exchange party at her house. There were 13 of us, so she assigned each of us one or two days of advent, leaving Christmas Day open for us all to do our own thing. (We based our days roughly on this model.) Then we each made or bought 13 copies of the ornament(s) for our day(s). At the party, we exchanged ornaments, explaining why we chose what we did to represent our story. Each of us went home with a set of 24 lovely, meaningful ornaments!
I was assigned day 12 – the story of Ruth – and day 14 – Jesse, but really the story of when Samuel anoints David to be future king. For the Ruth story, I made small bundles of dried wheat, because she gleans leftover wheat during the harvest. For the “Jesse” story, I made hearts out of felt; the passage about the anointing of David includes 1 Samuel 16:7, which says that “the Lord looks on the heart.”
I’m not sure yet how I’ll reveal and display the ornaments for Advent. The idea is that you have some sort of system of numbered ornament holders (one friend plans to hang 25 origami paper baskets from a branch; another will make a hanging fabric with burlap pockets). Then your family takes the first ornament out on December 1, reads the accompanying Bible passage, and hangs the ornament on a dedicated tree. (Again, one friend had a cool, twisty tree branch, which she spray-painted white and put in a vase. Another friend had a flat metal tree meant to hang on a wall. Since we have limited space, we may just put our ornaments on our regular Christmas tree for now.) Repeat for December 2-25, and you’ve gone through salvation history up to the birth of Jesus! Even though Brandt won’t really get it this year, I’m excited to start this family tradition.
(There are still a couple ornaments on their way, so I’ll try to do a follow-up post picturing the complete numbered set when I have them.)
Love this! Thanks for sharing!
So fun! Our church does this as a church, each week we add an “ornament” to a large tree at the front of the church. It’s really neat. But what an awesome idea to do them like this!!! Maybe I could get my act together and do it next year…anyhow, thanks for sharing!
(And a picture of you pregnant, yay! 
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This is such a neat idea, thanks for sharing!
(And, unrelated, but congratulations on finding out your little one is a girl! So happy for you!)