“On the second day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
Two Turtle Doves
and a Partridge in a Pear Tree”

” I am a Christian and yet Emma “believes” in Santa.
I have given it a lot of thought once Emma started to understand about these things and I decided to introduce him as God’s friend to her. Yeah, that’s right, Santa is God’s friend who gets sent by God to give her some presents at Christmas because of Jesus.
I want to achieve a number of things with this approach:
1. let my child be a child and, as you say, allow her imagination develop and thrive.
2. teach her that all good things come from God.
3. teach her to only accept presents when they are given with a reason. This will hopefully protect her in the future from predators and people who will want to take advantage of her. There is always a reason behind a gift: God’s at Christmas is because he is celebrating his son’s birthday.
I get annoyed with Christians and bigotry and the acceptance of “truths” fed in church without questioning. Is Santa a bad thing and the acronym of Satan, as I have heard Christians say?
Only if you let it be!”

So what will I do this year practically and differently?

I am very thrilled of two Christmas projects we will be running in parallel.

One will be creating a Jesse tree, inspired by Ann Voskamp’s new book, “Unwrapping the Greatest Gift.” I am the very privileged owner of a copy(retailing at the moment on Amazon for £14.21), which arrived in the post only yesterday and will be using it with Emma as a daily conversation starter and also as Christmas craft and decoration inspiration.

Ann has kindly and generously provided on her Holy Experience website a whole section dedicated to the new book and printable material in the form of free colouring pages for the little ones, free kids’ Jesse tree ornaments and also a section which unlocks with a password provided in the book which contains ALL the paper cut decoration samples used for her Jesse tree. What a gift to unlock and enjoy in the run up to Christmas!

The other thing I will be using this Christmas with Emma is the famous Christmas elf on the shelf!

I know that many households will be using their elf to keep the children’s behaviour in check in the run up to Christmas and but in this household we will be using her (oh yes, ours is a girl, of course!) to bring joy in the house every morning.

There are entire boards on Pinterest and an actual page dedicated to the elf, go and have a peep if you are intrigued!

I look forward to put on my creativity hat every evening once Emma will be in bed and come up with fun or silly ideas to make her smile in the morning.

How will I tie the two ideas together?

I will probably use the elf to deliver the letter from Santa we have waiting to be reviewed in a week or so 🙂 and then she will be making a daily appearance in December.

What will be the special things you will be doing this December to create that delicious anticipation than only Christmas and the arrival of a new baby can bring about? Do tell me in a comment, I would love to hear from you!