Making A Lasting Christmas

Pine Cone Festive

Today in the United States is what known as "Black Friday". As many Americans went shopping today the Christmas tones could be heard in majority of the stores. In fact this year many Christians are pleased to know that some major retailers have brought back "Merry Christmas!" signs into their stores. While some believe that this is a sign of bringing back the "true" spirit of Christmas back, an argument can be made that in fact this was done only for the fear of turning away shoppers who are Christians. No matter how you look at it, there is still one more place that needs the true spirit of Christmas- our family. Some Christian families may struggle to strike a balance and bring this spirit back into their family. Believe it or not it can be done quite easily. All you need is few minutes a day together as family, some colored scrap paper and Bible. And if you can follow things described below, by the time Christmas come, you will archive something that you may never have achieved yet.

Do the following every day until Christmas.

Chose the most appropriate time for your family to get together, if it can be done in the evening after dinner no better time can be found. Chose a passage from Bible to read. It can be just few verses. Begin from the Old Testament. You can read the passage that contain prophecy of Christ birth. Take few minutes to reflect on the passage. The using scrap paper and scissors cut out a star of about 4 inches in diameter. One the back of that star write a name of a person that you and your family will pray for next day and an act of charity that your family will engage the next day. Save every star and by the time Christmas come, you will and up with about 30 stars. You can use them to decorate your Christmas tree.

After a week or so, while you still may have plenty of names to put on the stars, you may find it difficult to come up with the charity acts. Do not get discouraged, if need be repeat the acts you have already accomplished and look with hope to the Christmas. By the time when the Christmas comes you and your family would have prayed for about 30 people and have accomplished about 30 acts of charity.

Eugenia Brown is a writer for Everything Catholic! - website that promotes products from Ingatius Press, a Catholic Publisher. There you can find books and literature on variety of topics including Christmas.