It may be the peak of fall where you live, or maybe even spring, but here at our house, winter has arrived. The ground is covered with snow (which has not stopped falling since yesterday), temperatures have stayed below freezing for the last week, and our snug little cabin suddenly feels much smaller since the unpacking of winter coats and mittens!
My 3 year-old was running around excitedly this morning, asking if we could get a Christmas tree and read all the Christmas books again! Oh, to be a child! I hate to dash his hopes, but we are not going to celebrate Christmas two months early!
Still, it got me thinking about the approaching season of festivity. Maybe it’s not such a bad idea to start planning and preparing, even though Christmas is still far away.
Planning for a Simple Christmas
Planning ahead gives us the opportunity to celebrate special days in meaningful ways. It lets us choose intentionally which customs are good for our families, instead of getting swept along with the popular culture.
It also helps us to remain peaceful throughout what can be a busy season, knowing that there is a plan in place and we don’t have to do everything all at once.
Here are some ways that my family prepares intentionally for Christmas and the surrounding holidays. I hope they help you to keep Christmas simply and joyfully!
Which days are you celebrating?
The commercial holiday season starts the day after Thanksgiving (or earlier), and ends on December 25, or January 1 if you’re lucky. After that point, holiday items disappear from the stores, radio stations resume their normal selections, and evergreens can be spotted lying bedraggled and lonely on sidewalks or in backyards.
Did you ever stop to wonder why we celebrate this way?
A month of festivities beforehand makes Christmas Day seem unimportant. People are already surfeited by the premature onslaught of holiday cheer. Wouldn’t Christmas (and Thanksgiving, and New Year’s Day) be more special if that particular day was given more significance?
What I’m suggesting here is, don’t party early. My family’s tradition, along with many cultures, is to save the celebrations for the holiday itself.
Instead of breaking out the decorations and putting up a tree at the beginning of December, we wait until a few days before Christmas. Instead of partying all month long, we use those weeks before Christmas to prepare our hearts and our homes.
During the secular holiday season between Thanksgiving and Christmas, we celebrate the season of Advent. This is a time of waiting, of looking forward joyfully to the coming celebration of Christmas. It’s a special time of preparation for a special day… or season, in fact.
Yes, we do celebrate Christmas as a season — just not on the same days as the secular culture does. For Catholics, the Christmas season begins on December 25 with the feast of Christ’s birth, and it continues until the feast of Christ’s Baptism in the Jordan (which is the Sunday after Epiphany).
This way of celebrating makes sense to me. We don’t celebrate birthdays before they happen, so why would we celebrate Christ’s birth early?
Furthermore, the Advent season of anticipation has always been one of my favorite seasons! It helps me to appreciate Christmas so much more when I spend four weeks reflecting on the meaning of the day, without all the distractions and whirlwind activity which characterizes December for so many people.
Advent is for quiet preparations
I said before that Advent is a time of preparation. Just like the nine months of pregnancy, there’s more to it than merely waiting for a baby to be born.
Advent is about preparing our hearts and our homes to welcome Christ when He comes: at Christmas, when we celebrate His birth, and at the end of the world, when He will come as the Just Judge.
Reflecting on these two comings of Christ makes Christmas more than merely a nostalgic time for family and friends. Advent gives us the opportunity to sweep out our hearts and homes to make room for Christ.
This requires a sort of quiet, thoughtful preparation. This time of waiting is by no means boring: there is plenty to do between cleaning house from top to bottom, making and wrapping gifts for loved ones, and preparing delicious foods for the coming festivities.
But it shouldn’t be too busy, too full, too loud and distracting. There should always be space for reflection, and time spent intentionally cultivating family traditions.
Keeping Advent at Home
How do you keep things quiet in the midst of the hustle and bustle of the holiday season? Well, you can’t change the secular culture, but you don’t have to let it into your house. Here are some suggestions to keep Advent quiet and meaningful:
Don’t throw a Christmas party before Christmas
What gets you in the “holiday spirit” more than a party? I’m not a Grinch, and I do like parties, but a Christmas party on December 10th seems a little premature, doesn’t it?
The time between Christmas Day and New Year’s (or Epiphany, January 6) is a wonderful time to celebrate with family and friends. If you’re invited to a Christmas party during Advent, it’s up to you. I personally don’t see any harm in going to such parties, provided they don’t take away too much of your peace of mind!
You can always explain to friends or relatives that you would rather wait until Christmas before celebrating. They might think you’re nuts, but they just might reschedule the party!
Don’t play Christmas music in your home before Christmas
I love Christmas music so much that, as a child, I would start playing it in August! Nowadays, I still love it, but I would rather save my enjoyment of it until Christmastime.
During December, we sometimes play music from “The Nutcracker” ballet or parts of Handel’s “Messiah.” There are some secular songs often played during December which are fine for Advent: “Winter Wonderland,” “Sleigh Ride,” and even “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” are a few. These songs are about winter, or waiting for Christmas.
If you search for it, you can find lots of music that is winter-themed instead of specifically about the holiday. But do save the Christmas carols for their proper season!
This really helps if you have young children, who get excited easily! Music that keeps them thinking about Christmas all the time makes the waiting that much harder for little ones.
Do you think the Christmas season is too short to enjoy all of your favorite Christmas songs? Have a caroling party! Whether you walk around your neighborhood singing door to door, or gather ’round the piano at home, this is a wonderful way to keep celebrating Christmas after December 25.
Bake Christmas cookies early, but save them
Have you ever turned away from a tray of goodies on Christmas because you just don’t want any more sweets? When you celebrate for a month before the actual holiday, the novelty wears off — and the significance is utterly lost.
We bake cookies on particular days throughout December to mark special feast days. We enjoy some of the cookies that night, and then freeze the rest for Christmas.
This is a double win for me: we get to celebrate the smaller feasts throughout December in a special way, and I don’t have to worry about baking a ton of cookies when I’m planning Christmas dinner!
You can read more about traditional cookies to make during Advent if you would like!
Make your decorations meaningful and simple
In keeping with the quiet spirit of Advent, we do not decorate much until a few days before Christmas, with one exception.
I make an Advent wreath at the beginning of Advent, and each evening, we light candles and say special prayers together. I love the scent of freshly-cut evergreens, and the tradition is important to our family.
As far as other decorations go, use your judgment. How do you want your house to feel during Christmastime? Festive decorations are fine, but I don’t want a jubilant feeling in my house much before Christmas, if I can help it.
Some people decorate slowly throughout December: first a nativity scene, then some greenery, and then the rest of it goes up a week or two before Christmas.
(One of the effects of living in a small cabin means not owning a lot of decorations, so it takes me approximately half an hour to decorate!) You might need more time, and thus it may make sense for you to start decorating earlier than I do.
What about Christmas trees?
I love Christmas trees, for their rich significance and tradition. If you’ve never looked up the early German traditions, or sung the original (translated, of course!) verses of “O Tannenbaum”, I encourage you to do so as a family activity.
After learning more about them, I was able to adopt my husband’s tradition of lighting the tree after sunset on Christmas Eve. We decorate our tree a few days before Christmas, but don’t light the tree lights until Christmas Eve, per a centuries-old tradition.
It’s a joyful and magical event when the father says a blessing over the tree, and all the lights begin to twinkle in the dusk. Then you know it’s Christmas!
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For more ideas about keeping Advent and Christmas, I highly recommend Kendra Tierney’s book, “The Catholic All Year Compendium.” *This is an affiliate link. Read my full disclosure here.*
I hope these Advent and Christmas traditions help you to slow down and make your celebration more meaningful this year. I love Christmas, and waiting for it has helped me to appreciate this special season so much.
~Kimberly
Melody Eger says
Great ideas Kim! I’ve always loved Christmas too, and I can’t wait to start celebrating! However, you are right that too much celebration before can make the actual Christmas season kind of draining rather than joyful. You gave me some great ideas to try this year!
kimberly says
I think it’s wise to take a hard look at your family traditions of celebrating holidays, and make sure they line up with what you really believe. It’s easy to just go along with what everyone else is doing, or say, “Well, I’ve always done it this way,” but I’ve found that intentionally keeping the meaningful traditions while dropping the others has helped me to celebrate without getting burned out.