Counting down to Christmas begins! --With a Advent Jesse Tree

Celebrating Christmas was something relatively new for me, a young Christian (11 years young in the Lord) who grew up in Communist China with nil exposure to Christianity. All the Christmas traditions, secular or religious, were pretty foreign to me too.

Several years ago, we began  hanging Christmas lights, setting up Christmas tree, and getting gifts for our children. Our family almost always participates in carols and children's Christmas play at church. Sometimes we have get-together with friends or with my sister's family. But overall, our Christmas is quite low key. My husband and I don't exchange Christmas gifts. My sister and I don't exchange Christmas gifts. Let alone our friends and extended families in China.

This year, I want to keep it low key in regards to gift exchange (at least among adults), but feel the need of starting some meaningful and fun family traditions for Christmas. Something centered on the true meaning of the season. A couple of hours online searching and surfing landed me on two words:  Jesse Tree. I got excited about the idea behind it (Old Testament prophecies pointing to the coming of Christ) and really like the visual symbols (symbols tracing the heritage of Jesus from the beginning of creation) that kids can understand. Starting out the planning late and being not crafty at all, I somehow managed to make an Advent calendar with the kids and set up a Jesse Tree the night before December 1.

Our home-made Advent calendar. I made the paper pockets and outlined the numbers. Daniel and James did the coloring of the numbers and helped with gluing the border on the poster.

Nativity scene. I bought this set on Wednesday (11/30) night, the night before our Christmas countdown.  Because the poster is not big enough and has no room for number 25, we made a separate mini poster for 25. While making it, I joked with the boys, "Oh, there is no room in the inn. There is no room on the poster for 25!" Daniel colored number 25 with rainbow color. Can you see it?

Jesse Tree with the Advent calendar and the Nativity scene. I bought a 2-feet Christmas tree at Michael's. Yesterday, the children and I made the first ornament and hung it on the Jesse Tree. As we count down to Christmas, we will do a daily devotion with scriptures,  prayers, and songs, and will make and add more ornaments to the little tree.

Update: Here is the Jesse Tree after we put some maybe not all the ornaments.