Mary Cassian describes some traditions that make Christmas meaningful at her house.

Being German, I had grew up with an Advent celebration.

So Advent really looking forward to the coming.

Advent is really important in our house and we set it up as a family tradition very early on.

So we have to have our tree up, everything decorated, everything ready by first advent, which sometimes

is at the end of November if it comes early that particular year because it's four Sundays

before Christmas.

So every Sunday of Advent, we celebrate Advent.

Even if it's a very simple celebration,

what we will do is we'll light a fire in the fireplace, we'll light all the candles, we'll sit around our family room, and then we would do just a very short advent remembrance.

So my husband would read a passage from the word and I have a Jesse tree, it's called a

Jesse tree, so every advent you get to open one package and pull out all these ornaments and put them on the tree.

So that was symbolic and the big thing is light the advent candle and say a word of prayer and

dig in and just sit around and really enjoy time together as a family.

Great preparation for Christmas.

So really we celebrate Christmas for the entire month of December.

This is the Reb month of December.

This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy De Moss Volgymouth,

author of choosing gratitude.

For December 19th, 2023, I'm Dana Gresch.

We're in a helpful series called Making Christmas More Meaningful.

Nancy De Maswalgamuth and a group of women

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