During the Christmas season, my husband and I always try to find ways we can help our kids understand why we celebrate Christmas. We discuss the birth of Jesus at our family night every week in December. We also make sure to talk about the tradition of Santa and getting presents and how all of those things started. We emphasis that they are merely traditions that are fun-but my kids still believe whole heartedly that Santa exists, which is fine with us 🙂 We talk about the importance of serving others and giving gifts to others-even if we don’t get a gift in return-which is proving to be a difficult concept for our 6-year-old this year 🙂 As part of our first family night in December, we talk about ways we can serve others and things we will do as a family. We call it the 12 days of service. As a family we choose 12 things we will do leading up to Christmas day. For the 12 days before Christmas we open a little note or gift and then perform the service on the card.

Here is our 12 days of service from a few years ago. This year our list looks very similar. Instead of hanging the gifts and service notes from our curtain rod, I hung them on a branch and just set the branch on some hooks.

{head over to Made to be a Momma to check out one of my favorite holiday cookie recipes}