Advent calendars

It's mid November, which means it's almost December, which means it's almost time to drag the Advent calendars out again in our house. In a culture that does Advent as a waiting-for-Santa season and spreads out the stress-and-shopping bits of Christmas over the whole of December (and most of November), I love the way the Advent calendar spreads out some of the good bits of Christmas, and structures the season around the story of Jesus as the centre of the fun and celebration. 

If you are looking for ideas for how to make your own Ally has collected some great examples in a recent blog post . Some are easier than others, but they all look amazing!

You can find some inspiration from fellow 168 hours readers over the past two years of Advent Calendar competitions (you'll have to trawl through some Christmas poety and reflections as well, but that may not hurt!).  I'm probably going to do something similar to last year, reading through the first chapters of Luke and Matthew (I print them out off the computer and divide them into 25 parts - email me if you want a copy) and using some ideas of Ally's along the way for the activities.

I'm not going to do an Advent calendar competition this year, but I do have a couple of other possibilities in mind - will keep you posted over the next few days.