The month before my husband and I were engaged, I was decorating my apartment with my roommate at the time. I realized that I didn’t have any sort of Advent calendar to help me celebrate the days leading up to Christmas. I wanted it to be something that reflected me, something that would last, and that I could take overseas.
Since I usually read an Advent Devotional online each year, the Advent Calendar is filled with fun activities that you can do NO MATTER WHAT COUNTRY you live in. The purpose is to enjoy time with family + friends, embrace the Christmas season, and of course—to have fun.
Notes About Making it: The gold craft tape was from a craft store and the numbers and pockets were things I cut out of cardstock from free templates online. The little papers inside are name badge stickers from Target. This year my husband and I cut down the bamboo stick in the jungle 🐒 and the yarn is from a local store. But, if you don’t happen to have a jungle in your backyard, you can pin or hang the pockets on anything that works and fill them with candy, slips of paper with activities or verses, or whatever suits your stage of life and season.
Traditions aren’t about perfection, they are about repeated intentional moments with others that bring us back to something greater than ourselves.
We didn’t do every advent activity perfectly or even on the right day things were “assigned.” –we just did what we could and tried to enjoy it all.
1. Begin reading The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. (*tradition since I was in upper elementary school)
“Since Gladys was the only one in the pageant who had anything to say she made the most of it: “Hey! Unto you a child is born!” she hollered, as if it was, for sure, the best news in the world. And all the shepherds trembled, sore afraid—of Gladys, mainly, but it looked good anyway.”
– Barbara Robinson . The Best Christmas Pageant Ever
2. Make homemade hot chocolate
3. Dance Party to Christmas music in the living room
4. Breakfast for dinner (we ate real food for dinner and had monkey bread for dessert)
5. Go on a night walk
6. Read a Christmas book
7. Living Room Fort and Movie Night
8. Make Christmas Cards
9. Sing Christmas songs about the Nations
10. Cut out snowflakes and hang them up
11. Look at a map and pray for the Nations
12. Cut greenery for the house – the “greenery” looked a little different this year since we couldn’t find anything evergreen-ish. But these are actually flowers from a Crown of Thorns plant –a shrub with densely spiny stems. As we are in the season of celebrating WHEN Christ came, the plant has been a perfect reminder of WHY he came as well.
13. Make homemade eggnog –this is my favorite eggnog recipe)
14. Host a Christmas party
15. Memorize a verse
16. Random act of kindness (click here for the best Candied Pecan recipe ever)
17. Share the Christmas story with a stranger
18. Christmas Skype Call
19. Watch Elf
“Have you seen these toilets?”
– Buddy the Elf
20. Christmas Photo Booth Night
21. Have a red and green dinner (homemade pizza sauce counts, right?)
22. Share Christmas memories
23. Candlelight Family Dinner (only candlelights- no other light)
24. Make rice pudding
What are some of your favorite Advent rhythms or activities?