The Christmas Angel

Just about everyone has head about The Elf on the Shelf and is partaking in this new tradition.  I eagerly jumped on board the elf bandwagon and our elf, Elfie, made her first appearance the night of Thanksgiving 2009 for Isabella's first Christmas.  It is a fun tradition, however, I have to admit it doesn't really fit in with what I want the focus of our Christmas season to be and what I want our daughter to learn about: Christ.


There have been many calls in recent years for people to turn back to the birth of our Lord as the central focus of the holiday season.  The days leading up to the birth of Jesus, known as Advent, have certainly become more of a mainstream celebration, with many folks now using all kinds of advent calendars.  I have done my best to keep all of the "vehicles" we use during advent driving toward to manger, but with little ones that sure is a challenge!  Well, I recently discovered The Christmas Angel and I think this little sweetie is just what I have been looking for!

I did not do away with out elf.  She will leave on Christmas Eve with Santa.  She will leave a goodbye letter and introduce The Christmas Angel.  I plan on having Twelve Days of Christmas Kindess using our angel.  Each day we will learn and talk about one of Jesus' many names (revealing his nature) and Bella (with our help of course) will do an act of CHRISTmas kindess.  Here is the muffin tin I made for this:

 Each day has a paper link with one of the names of Jesus for us to talk about along with a Hershey kiss for when the act of kindness is done.  I downloaded the beautiful Names of Jesus advent chain from the FABULOUS homeschool blog Spell Out Loud.  I picked the twelve I liked the best and would be easy to teach an almost 3 year old.

On Christmas Day our Christmas Angel will be staged by the baby Jesus with this little poem:

Away in a manger,

No crib for a bed,

The little Lord Jesus

Lay down his sweet head.

Many generations later,

The problem unaddressed

Precious little children,

Without a place to rest.

Let us take up this cross

In the year ahead

To put aside some comforts

To give a few a bed.

Our first act of kindness will be a year-long endeavor to save up change for the non-profit organization Sweet Sleep.  Here is our change container:

I am really excited about our Twelve Days of Christmas Kindness!  Our angel will leave us on Epiphany (most likely by way of La Befana.)  Pop over and check out The Christmas Angel website and LIKE them on Facebook to get  more ideas!