Our Angel Tradition

The angel devotional takes place four weeks before Christmas.

 I imagine the same angel that spoke to Mary about her upcoming pregnancy, and Joseph about supporting Mary in her pregnancy was probably the same angel that made the announcement to the shepherds that the baby was born. I often wonder how an angel is chosen to be the one to make such announcements. 

Here is a personal disclosure.  I love to sing. But I am not at all good at singing. In fact, I am so bad at singing my baby daughter cries every time I sing. I am not offended, I think it is kind of funny that she is so young and already knows how horrible I am. My poor other kids have grown up with me singing to them every night, and they are just trained to think I am good, they have no idea how bad I am. But I like to think, that in the Pre-earth life I wasn't so bad at singing, and I like to pretend that maybe I was part of the heavenly host singing about the birth of the Savior.

Anyhow, to celebrate the angel I would love to take my family Christmas Caroling, but that is WAY out of my comfort zone, think if the 18 month old cries, what adults would do when they heard me sing, I would be publicly shamed. So instead, we sing every Christmas Hymn we can think of this night. And then for the rest of the month we sing a song or two at night when we say our family prayers.  I think this is one of my favorite traditions.

Our Mary Tradition

We recently moved from Utah to the mid-west. Everyone warned us that it would be a huge culture shock. I am probably not a fair judge of if it is a culture shock or not, because I went from working full time, to staying home with my baby. My kids would likely tell you otherwise, but I have not felt the culture here is at all shocking. The biggest difference I see is that many people have a Statue of Mary in their yard all year long, this is nothing we saw back in Utah. I am not joining the many people out here that have Mary in the front lawn, but I do have a Devotional for Mary the fifth week before Christmas.

I think that Mary is greatly misunderstood.  In fact I would go so far as to say that I think that Satan has done an excellent job of deceptively down playing Mary. People think I am crazy because I loath the song, "Mary did you know?"  Guess what folks, of course, she knew. She knew better than anyone that the child she had was the Son of God. Everyone else is working off of faith, But MARY she KNEW that the child she carried was miraculously put there. And God didn't just select anyone to be the mother of his One and Only child, or the Mother of the Savior of the World.  The angel Gabriel informed her that she was Chosen. She was an elect lady. She was responsible for teaching this child, and preparing  him for his divine mission.

This task placed on Mary must have been overwhelming. Mary's testimony must have been unwavering. But she wasn't asked to do it alone, she had Elizabeth, her cousin who also was pregnant with a Miracle baby, and she had Joseph right by her side. This year for our activity after the lesson part of the devotional we stood in a circle, and we pondered about our testimonies for a minute. After a few minutes I gave out candles and lit my Husband's he then shared his testimony and lit someone else's candle. We watched the light grow as we shared our testimony's with each other. Just like Mary and Joseph strengthened each other, and Jesus helped strengthened his parent's testimony, we likewise can strengthen each other in our own family, and together we can do what God asks.

I love hearing my children's testimony's and I love the beautiful light cast by the candles. This is one of my favorite Traditions.

 

Our Joseph Tradition

 If you are looking for a real simple way of adding Christ into your traditions Emily Belle Freeman has a great book out there. Christ Centered Christmas. you can get the adult version.

 But really I love the children's version

I love them because they go through the nativity and one by one, you add the nativity pieces, talk about them, learn about them and it has a simple activity to do. I love that it has figured it all out.  There are seven mini lessons, We do them the seven Sundays leading up to Christmas. But you could do them the seven days before Christmas, or just randomly through out the year. Some of the activities I swap out with my own.  BUT I LOVE THAT IF I DON'T WANT TO I DON'T HAVE TO THINK! 

But for instance Joseph

It talks about how he quietly went about cleaning and getting everything ready for the baby. I totally agree that Joseph was the quiet hero that often gets over looked. I love how the activity for Joseph is to chose a secret act of service the Family can participate in.  Joseph is the second mini lesson, so this happens for us six weeks before Christmas. We either start our secret person swap at this time, when we all draw a family member's name out of a hat and serve them for that week, and then we do that again each week leading up to Christmas. Or we pull out our Manger to fill with hay.  When you do something nice, for anyone, you can put a piece of hay in the manger.

This is mine, it came in a set called, Soft Enough for a King.

But you can find all sorts of them. with the same concept, or you can simply get just any manger, and it will work. I think this set looks really cute.

I think this is one of my favorite traditions.

We Did it!

 After almost an entire year of talking about it, we finally did it!  My sister and I just recorded our first podcast. It is scheduled to drop on Sunday! I am so excited to hopefully be able to reach more people this way!  We have been learning so much as we have been studying traditions of the bible we really wanted to share it with everyone! This is how we are going to try and do it!

The first podcast was about Hanukkah. We felt it only appropriate to start there because Hanukkah is really were our journey studying biblical holiday's began for both of us. Honestly, it is a bit rough, we realize we have room to improve, but not bad for two armatures who have no Idea what we are doing.

One thing that is hard for me is figuring out which aspects we want to share! There is so much I have learned and I want to share everything!

But here it is, in all it's glory.

https://youtu.be/Mf_Xejachu0

Holy Cow I can't believe we really did it!

Mezzuzahs

 

We have been repeatedly told to create Christ Centered homes. Our homes should bare testimony to all who live, visit, or enter our homes of our faith in Jesus Christ and his atonement. In recent General Conferences we have been told we need to fortify our homes and make them a fortress of safety. We have switched to home centered church. (During the pandemic we had home only church). This direction is nothing new. In the book of Mormon Nephi says "And we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ, and we write according to our prophecies, that our children may know to what source they may look for a remission of their sins" 2 Nephi 25:26. 

My family recently moved across the country and are living in a new house in a new area. This has become even more important to create a sanctuary of peace for my children. A place that all can come and feel of the love of the Savior. During Family night we talked about how we are doing this physically. The kids were quick to point out that our decorations on centered on Christ, we have scriptures hanging on the wall in most rooms and my kids all have pictures of Christ on their walls.

Then we talked about  Deuteronomy 6 and how the Lord has commanded us  to keep his words in our hearts, to teach our children his words, to talk about his word with our neighbors and to put his word on our walls and door posts. And while I think that having pictures of Christ and Scriptures hanging on the Wall probably fulfills the intent of Deuteronomy 6 I thought it would be fun to do Mezuzahs.  Mezuzahs are how the Israelites put scriptures on the door posts. So for our activity we all chose favorite scriptures and the kids made Mezuzahs to put on their door posts in their rooms. We also have one to put on our front door post. I love the idea that every time you go in and out you see it and your thoughts are turned to our Creator. I love that the kids could choose a scripture that represented what they wanted to remember and only they know what it is. It becomes a personal moment of communication every time they leave their room.  I don't know what their scripture choice is, but they could be reminded that they are loved, or they can do hard things. etc.

I asked the kids to show me their finished Mezuzahs. They had a little too much fun showing off their talents.

I am excited to hang our Mezuzahs up. The kids loved the idea and thought it was a great way to remind themselves of the power scriptures can give them. 

I am excited for the opportunity it provides for questions from friends, and opportunities to discuss the gospel.