Every Christian household faces the same struggle every year, especially as they look back after New Year’s is over and wonder if their was anything, remotely “Christian” in their observance of the special days from Thanksgiving through Christmas to New Year’s.

If you add up the preparation for these days almost six weeks is taken up by them which is 10% of our calendar year. If we are true to our beliefs of putting everything under the Lordship of Jesus Christ and believe that “whether we eat or drink or whatever we do we do it to the glory of God” (I Corinthians 10:31) our family practices should be periodically “reviewed” to see how we are doing.

It’s not too difficult to be convinced that Halloween with its satanic origins and practices should be happily replaced by Reformation Day (October 31st is when Martin Luther pinned the 95 theses on the Wittenberg door igniting the Reformation in Europe) or at least a “Harvest Festival.” There are now many helps in getting us to refocus our attentions away from the orange and blacks of Halloween onto our Reformation heritage. Children’s Ministry International offers a Heroes of the Reformation book that assists families and churches to do this by learning our Reformation heritage and the key individuals who lived during that time.

But Thanksgiving and Christmas are bigger fish to fry and take a lot more effort to “redeem” the days for the Lord.

Our Thanksgiving heritage is uniquely Christian. Our Pilgrim forefathers dedicated a day of thanksgiving to God for sustaining them through their first year at Plymouth. God had sent an English-speaking Native American named Squanto to teach the new settlers how to plant their crops and adapt to the new climate and environment. Even though 50% of the Pilgrims had lost their lives they still could see that God had brought them through their first winter and they wanted to celebrate this accomplishment. Many churches have Thanksgiving Services, the evening before Thanksgiving with a clear emphasis on thanking God for His many mercies throughout the year.

Thanksgiving Day can be set a part by having family members giving testimony on how God has provided for them throughout the year. The original story of Thanksgiving could be read. Again Children’s Ministry International (CMI) has produced three volumes of the “Holiday Series” where each of the special days of the year are explained from a Christian perspective. Volume 3 contains Thanksgiving and the other fall and early winter celebrations.

What about the Christmas? An Advent calendar can take the four weeks prior to Christmas and celebrate the Bible stories that point to the coming Incarnation of Christ. Each evening the family can read about a particular part of the Bible where the coming Messiah is mentioned. A symbol of that story can be placed on the Christmas or branch for this is truly the “out of the root of Jesse” that Christ is emerging. CMI has a Family “Advent Series” for families to do just this for every day of Advent. The children will look forward to placing each symbol on your family Christmas tree culminating in Christ’s birth celebration on Christmas Eve.

I know when my wife and I wanted to make distinctive holiday Christ-centered practices for our family; Christmas was first on the list. Santa Claus, reindeer, secular decorations, song, gift shopping and lots of other non-Christian items had pushed out the picture of the Incarnation of God. We studied each aspect of what we were doing and happily found ways to emphasize the coming birth of Christ during Advent. A “Jesse Tree” became a centerpiece in our living room as a new symbol was added daily. Yes, it looked a bit odd to see a “half-decorated” Christmas tree in the middle of December, but it was a tremendous witness to believers and especially unbelievers who had lots of questions about these strange symbols of Christ’s heritage found in the Bible. Our children, as they grew, had a wonderful time explaining the meaning of the “Jesse Tree” symbols.

Christmas cards became opportunities to share the love of Christ with our non-believing friends by having a clear Gospel message. Throughout the year we sometimes used the Christmas cards received to pray for families by placing the cards in a container readily available at devotion times.

Of course, we can encourage our churches to have meaningful holiday services that point clearly to Christ. You wouldn’t be reading this article if you weren’t a leader in your local church! Advent messages from the pulpit and Sunday School hour can surely culminate in a poignant Christmas Eve Service. Unbelievers are often drawn to church during this period, they should clearly hear the Gospel message of Christ becoming man to dwell among us and show us the way of true love in His Sacrifice for our sins.

Another new tradition our family adopted was waiting to open our gifts until “Epiphany” or the coming of the Magi. This freed-up Christmas day to be a day where we could invite others to our home who did not have a place to be on Christmas day. Christmas day is the loneliest day of the year for people without local family, an excellent time to have singles over who are displaced geographically and for other family reasons (perhaps age, divorce, death or a hundred other causes).

Gifts have a way of dominating the day, especially for younger kids as the day can disintegrate into an overdose of “gimme-gimme”, ostentatious gift receiving. The kids are worked up into such a receiving frenzy that it’s impossible to do anything else but accommodate the gift exchange. Instead, by the use of puppets I (the father) have acted out the Christmas story to the delight of my children year after year, they have never grown tired of it even as young adults with children of their own. Also, we normally spend Christmas day afternoon building a village of gingerbread houses or popcorn snowmen with our visitors.

Our family also started an “open-house” tradition throughout December of having our home open for Sunday evening receptions. This allowed many people to visit our home, sing carols by our piano, see our Jesse Tree and share fellowship. As stated above the Christmas season can be a lonely time of year. Our kids would help decorate the house with many manger/crèche arrangements that we had collected around the world (I was in the Navy for 25 years and we travel often with CMI).

The point of this article is to challenge our tendency to cradle our Holiday traditions for only our immediate families and deny to others an opportunity of truly seeing Christ minister to the lonely, single and isolated people we are in contact with. If you looked at all the energy a family normally puts into “holiday tradition” and examined exactly how many of those traditions “touch” others we would all be surprised. Christmas is truly “merry” for believers when we see that seekers understand that Christ came to earth to save sinners, God became man to show us the way for salvation in Christ alone. How do you think Christ would have celebrated His birthday party?
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Brad Winsted has been the Director of Children’s Ministry International since 1997. CMI conducts all the children’s conferences for Mission to the World Conferences around the world. CMI produces reformed, devotional, educational and seasonal material for children, parents and teachers. CMI also conducts seminars on parenting and catechetical subjects. You can also call 1-888-345-4264