I hope you have enjoyed this Christmas season as I’ve shared with you our own family traditions.  We have camped out under the Christmas tree, learned to bless others through our Advent celebrations and made candy and gingerbread nativities!  And I cannot thank you enough for all the Christmas book suggestions!

So, instead of the usual Large Family Organization Link Up, let’s celebrate Christ’s birth together!

Any Christmas post you have that you would like to share, link it up so we can have a little virtual visiting this Christmas week!

And don’t forget to snag my FREE Christmas Eve Candlelight Service!

Thank you so much for joining me and have a Merry Christmas!

Every year at Christmas time, my mom pulled out the Christmas books that had been packed away for the past 11 months.

One book in particular that holds very fond memories for me is this one:

This book had a popout manger scene, a wheel you turned to make the star sparkle and I would spend hours looking at this book and playing through it’s pages.

I love having good books lying about all year round, but I particularly wanted this Christmas memory for my own children.  However, I’ve fallen drastically short in the Christmas book department.  The ones you see above are pretty much it.  There are a couple others that are pretty meaningless twaddle that I’d like to get rid of, but I’d want to have something to replace them if possible.

So, I’d like to hear about your favorite children’s Christmas books!  Leave your comments here so I can build my library for next year!

We read of the shepherds that wondrous night.  And he wanted to be one.  My little dress-up kid pulled together everything he needed from the far reaches of the house and brought them to me to help him get dressed.  The excitement in his eyes and voice thrilled my soul as I guided his arms through the sleeves of my robe and tied the bath towel around his head.

Such a simple message brought to simple people and my son wanted to be a part of that message and a part of those simple shepherds on the hillside.  This child who exhibits a faith that can move mountains wanted to be one of the first to know of the Child in whom his faith resides.

This is the little boy who speaks with excitement of the day he’ll once again get to see his sister in Heaven.  This is the little boy whose father prayed over him when he was just a tiny tot, “May your words be those of the Lord,” because he had a speech impediment.  This is the little boy who is thrilled by the simple things in life…like pink bathrobes and brown towels and his brother’s walking stick…

and a Child so perfect He could take away the sins of the world.

May we have this kind of simple faith.

Always.

I had been guarding our family against chaos during Christmas by guarding us against too many people until I realized people are what this is all about.

Read more of Sharing Christmas Outside Your Family at AnnaleaHart.com where I am guest posting today.

Years ago my mother-in-law bought up a ton of Christmas crafting type things on clearance after Christmas.  She was going to use them for another project, but the next year decided to hand them over to our crew instead.  We made good use of them for many years, but last year when we used up the last of them, we realized just how much we were going to miss our lovely hodge-podge of crafts.

This year, when I loaded our Thanksgiving Stockings, I included some foam crafts I picked up at WalMart for very little money.  The kids loved it and even the adults got in on the crafting!

Now, some of you are probably thinking how cheesy and cheap these sorts of things are, and I totally agree, but with 6 children, I cannot possibly plan and execute and then keep forever and ever exquisite Christmas crafts.  These come {and go} with no guilt!

There are a lot of wonderfully simple options for keeping little hands busy crafting this Christmas season.  We do everything from coffee filter snowflakes to wallpaper angels (same template as the paper plate angel here, only we use our stash of wallpaper samples).  A couple of times we purchased some of the easy bulk crafts from Oriental Trading and every now and then I manage to find a great after-season deal at one of our local stores.  Sidetracked Sarah has an ebook 25 Days of Easy Christmas Crafts free to subscribers and Pinterest is full of ideas this time of year!

Once again, I want to impress upon you that it doesn’t have to be fancy to make memories.

and in case you are wondering…

Yes, those are Santa Clauses in the photo and no, we don’t do Santa around here.  My children know who Santa was named after and they know the story behind St. Nicholas, but that’s as far as it goes.  However, there is a Santa head that plays Jingle Bells hanging on my wall.  It’s from my childhood.  You can see a similar one here: Vintage Santa Head (yes, they called it “vintage.”)  There are also a few Santas on the Christmas tree from my husband’s childhood.  We place it all in the proper context and don’t get too uptight about it.

What Christmas crafts do you do with your children?  I’m always on the lookout for new ones…as long as they are guilt free!