Christmas
Christmas is an odd holiday for me. As a Christian that seeks to stay true to the Word I see nothing that tells me to celebrate the Lord's birth nor is there any proof that December 25th is His birth day. There are pagan roots to the holiday and there is no evidence of the early church celebrating this event until the 300sAD. That is a bit late to either give any credence to the date or the command to celebrate it. However, is celebrating it wrong? That is a subject I do not want to debate in this thread. Whenever this question comes to me I am always led to the 14th chapter in Romans which says
Rom 14:5, 14 One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind...Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. NIV
So whether a Christian celebrates it is a religious holiday or chooses not to, we should not judge them for it. These are what Romans 14:1 refers to as "disputable" matters and allows us freedom in choosing what we do.
On a personal level we celebrate Christmas with some of the secular traditions of exchanging presents and putting up a tree. We do share the nativity story with my daughter at this time of year. What we do not do is say this is Jesus' birthday, because there is no evidence to support that it is. We do not get on the "keep Christ in Christmas" campaigns because we are not convinced that Christ was ever in it. We do not do Santa Claus because we do not care to lie to our child. But mostly we do not judge how others celebrate or refrain from celebrating this holiday. We pray that they give us the same respect in return.
With that said here are a few of the "Christmas" things we did for homeschool.
Crafts
Because of how I feel about Christmas I never know what parts of it to focus on or not so I did not do many crafts, but in Sunday School we did do a simple nativity scene craft from First School Preschool activites and crafts. She made a glitter Christmas tree and Christmas Card at the library story time as well.
What we did do was bake some cookies. Since presents are being given at Christmas I want my daughter to think of giving as much as receiving. Since I am not talented when it comes to "making" gifts I figured we would bake cookies to give away. Now I realize that I am not talented at baking either! I admire all those homeschool mothers who have oodles of homemade goodies on their blogs. I was lucky to pull off some sugar cookies myself. It took two tries to get this to work and it was an exhausting process but in the end we made some cookies to give to family and friends for Christmas. Since I may not ever attempt this again, here is proof that we did it once!
Books
We checked out several books from the library. I found these two particularly good because of our views on the holiday. It shows why these items are part of a Christian celebration of the birth of Christ. It allows the child to understand that these traditions are not part of the Bible but that they, like any other resource we have, can be used to help explain it.
Videos
The Star of Christmas is a Veggie Tale Movie that is really good. My daughter loves it. Our AWANA kids watched it this year too.
The other video my daughter really loved was the Beginner's Bible Series "The Story of The Nativity." She loves all the movies in this series.
My daughter has been counting the days until Christmas on her calendar every day. She had a party with our Down Syndrome support group which she really enjoyed and she is looking forward to opening her presents. She also knows that this time of year we celebrate when Jesus was born. She does not say it is Jesus' birthday, but she knows that this is the time of year when people choose to celebrate that wonderful event.
That is how we choose to teach some of the materials for this season. We had our final school day on Friday and will not be back to school until January. So until then, we pray (no matter how you celebrate the day) that all of you may you have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Rom 14:5, 14 One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind...Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. NIV
So whether a Christian celebrates it is a religious holiday or chooses not to, we should not judge them for it. These are what Romans 14:1 refers to as "disputable" matters and allows us freedom in choosing what we do.
On a personal level we celebrate Christmas with some of the secular traditions of exchanging presents and putting up a tree. We do share the nativity story with my daughter at this time of year. What we do not do is say this is Jesus' birthday, because there is no evidence to support that it is. We do not get on the "keep Christ in Christmas" campaigns because we are not convinced that Christ was ever in it. We do not do Santa Claus because we do not care to lie to our child. But mostly we do not judge how others celebrate or refrain from celebrating this holiday. We pray that they give us the same respect in return.
With that said here are a few of the "Christmas" things we did for homeschool.
Crafts
Because of how I feel about Christmas I never know what parts of it to focus on or not so I did not do many crafts, but in Sunday School we did do a simple nativity scene craft from First School Preschool activites and crafts. She made a glitter Christmas tree and Christmas Card at the library story time as well.
What we did do was bake some cookies. Since presents are being given at Christmas I want my daughter to think of giving as much as receiving. Since I am not talented when it comes to "making" gifts I figured we would bake cookies to give away. Now I realize that I am not talented at baking either! I admire all those homeschool mothers who have oodles of homemade goodies on their blogs. I was lucky to pull off some sugar cookies myself. It took two tries to get this to work and it was an exhausting process but in the end we made some cookies to give to family and friends for Christmas. Since I may not ever attempt this again, here is proof that we did it once!
Books
We checked out several books from the library. I found these two particularly good because of our views on the holiday. It shows why these items are part of a Christian celebration of the birth of Christ. It allows the child to understand that these traditions are not part of the Bible but that they, like any other resource we have, can be used to help explain it.
The Legend of the Christmas Tree
The Legend of the Candy Cane
Videos
The Star of Christmas is a Veggie Tale Movie that is really good. My daughter loves it. Our AWANA kids watched it this year too.
The other video my daughter really loved was the Beginner's Bible Series "The Story of The Nativity." She loves all the movies in this series.
My daughter has been counting the days until Christmas on her calendar every day. She had a party with our Down Syndrome support group which she really enjoyed and she is looking forward to opening her presents. She also knows that this time of year we celebrate when Jesus was born. She does not say it is Jesus' birthday, but she knows that this is the time of year when people choose to celebrate that wonderful event.
That is how we choose to teach some of the materials for this season. We had our final school day on Friday and will not be back to school until January. So until then, we pray (no matter how you celebrate the day) that all of you may you have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
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