Advent starts this weekend - Saturday or Sunday depending on whether you follow the December 1-24 plan or the 4 Sundays before Christmas plan.
I follow whichever plan gives me more days for my Jesse Tree.
I have been bugging Joe to dig out my Jesse Tree and Cookie from the basement, but he hasn't done it yet.
I'm ready to get this party started.
I get a lot of email questions about the Jesse Tree. Here are the most common ones:
What is a Jesse Tree?
The Jesse Tree is a special kind of Advent calendar that traces the lineage of Jesus the whole way through the Old Testament, back to God Himself.
Why celebrate with a Jesse Tree?
It is so important to me to focus our December on Jesus.
Santa comes to our house on Christmas Eve, and Christmas Day is so much about presents and family, and I'm okay with that.
But the rest of the holiday season? All about the excitement of a coming Savior.
How can you do a Jesse Tree?
I made fancy {cough, cough} felt ornaments for my tree, but you don't have to get that crafty.
You need 3 things to do a Jesse Tree:
- Devotions
- A tree
- Ornaments
The devotions
These will come from my Jesse Tree ebook. You can, of course, find them all over the internet, but none are as simple and nice as mine. {See how modest and helpful I am?}
The actual tree
I recommend one of two options for your tree. Either make a flat poster-like tree (out of paper or cardboard) to hang on the wall or buy or repurpose a little artificial tree.
We went the super ugly route and got a white plastic-y tree that sits on our dining room table all month long.
The ornaments
You can print ornaments from the Reformed Church of America and have your kids color them. You could print them and trace onto shrinky dinks. I printed that set, cut them apart, and used them as patterns to make my felt ornaments.
You could print the ones in my ebook (more on that below) and use them as is. Or use them for inspiration to make or repurpose existing ornaments. There are lot of options from easy to elaborate.
Where can you get Jesse Tree devotions?
In 2011, I created a very plain (not fancy or dressed up) ebook that contains all of my Jesse Tree devotions. In 2014, I had an honest to goodness ebook designer pretty it up and make it official. What she made was a beautiful, full color ebook worthy of any Christian family.
Each page tells about the central character, the theme, the ornament or symbol, a Bible verse to read and talk about, a song (28 different songs, one for each day), a longer reading about the central character, and a prayer that you can read and pray.
Please, go grab my (really useful) Jesse Tree ebook. Print it out, put it into a binder, put some ornaments together, and you'll be all ready for the weekend.