Christmas/Hanukkah idea-4

This idea needs some advance planning unless you work really quick, ha. It's based on the traditional "Advent Calendar." Advent is the four week lead up to Christmas Day. An Advent Calendar is a picture of a Christmas scene with a closed "window" for each day in December. On December 1 the first window "1" is opened. If it's a paper calendar it reveals a scene. If it is a three dimensional Advent Calendar, of paper/cardboard, wood, etc. it is often shaped like a drawer and a small toy or candy can be found inside.

I always enjoyed one as a child and still do. It's a devotional item because traditionally the scene is of the Nativity and each door simply reveals more of the picture until the December 24 door shows the Baby Jesus and Holy Family around the manger. They are also nicely done traditional holiday scenes, such as Santa, or winter scenes and so forth. They are especially great for children to give them an enjoyable treat each day leading up to Christmas, helping them to wait for the big day, but also a way to remind them of "the reason for the season."

Well, I've always thought that making one's own Advent Calendar as an advance Christmas present would be a fun and terrific thing to do. All you need is one of those organizers with lots of drawers, such as found in art supply or home improvement stores. For example you can use a standing type with drawers as found in hardware section or flat organizers such as in arts and crafts (like what beading hobbyists use). It really depends on the number and size of drawers needed.

Suppose you have a friend who is an artist. Imagine what fun it would be to give him or her one of these Advent Calendars (you glue a picture on the front and number the drawers) and in each drawer you have a tube of paint or other small art supply. So your friend opens drawer "1" on Dec 1 and already gets a gift. Save the best gift for drawer "24" ha. You can see what I mean that this requires some thought and organizing to make it by Dec 1, but hey, whenever they receive it they can open all the doors up to that date :-)

What if you have a friend who collects, especially small items, like buttons, coins, badges? Again, you put an item that adds to their collection in each drawer.

You could give someone a charm bracelet by putting a charm in each drawer and the bracelet in the Dec 24 door. Likewise you can put friendship bracelets, wrist bands, backpack accessories, and so forth, one in each door.

Obviously this is great for children. They can have a small piece of age appropriate candy in each drawer for an inexpensive but exciting month long experience for them.

You can do this for Advent leading up to Christmas or the Days of Hanukkah!

The Catholic Bishops have an online Advent Calendar at their website www.usccb.org where you click on each door and have faith based ideas for activities, plus the Bible readings for the day. If you do a secular one with your child you might also want to have a printout of the religious Advent Calendar so you can remind your child why the holiday exists and the love of God.

Hallmark and other greeting card stores carry a few designs of the traditional Advent Calendars so do pick one up for yourself. They used to sell out rapidly but every year I see fewer people buying these and even knowing about them. It's such a small thing (having the paper calendar for one's self) but such a great treat each day.

Have fun with this, whatever level you are able to take it to!

marymajor's Advent Calendar: December 24

December 24


Have faith with love, for love without faith you cannot have.

It could be that you believe Christ has come, yet not love Christ. But it cannot be that you love Christ, yet affirm that Christ has not come.

Therefore, let you have faith with love...You who love Christ, love one another: Love your friends, love your enemies. Let this not be a burden for you. What can you lose, where you gain so much?

Love such as that we find also in sheep and sparrows. You know how sparrows and swallows love their mates, how both will hatch their eggs, and both feed the young with a certain sweet and natural goodness, without thought of recompense. The sparrow will not say: 'I feed my young, so that when I am old, they will feed me.' It has no such thought. It loves freely, and nourishes freely. It bestows the love of a parent, looking for no return.

But let you spread wide your love. Let this love grow... Have faith in God. First love God. Extend your love to God; and seize whomever you can for God.

Turning then to the Lord our God, let us as best we can give thanks with all our hearts, beseeching Him that in His goodness He will graciously hear our prayers and by His power drive evil from our thoughts and actions, increase our faith, guide our minds, grant us His holy inspirations, and bring us to joy without end through His Son our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.


- St. Augustine

marymajor's Advent Calendar: December 23

December 23


O true lowliness, which has brought forth God to men, given true life to mortals, renewed the heavens, purified the world, opened paradise, brought freedom to the souls of men.

The lowliness of Mary has become the heavenly stair by which God came down to earth.



- St. Augustine

marymajor's Advent Calendar: December 22

December 22


The Lord has visited his people, not only once by the Incarnation of His Word [the birth of Jesus Christ], but by sending It at all times into our hearts.


- St. Bede the Venerable

marymajor Advent Calendar: December 21

December 21

See in what manner the angels announce to the shepherds the Prince of Shepherds: as a new-born Lamb, seen in a cave.
-Greek commentator

With frequent heralding of angels, and with manifold testimonies of the Gospels, the Infancy of the Savior is impressed on our hearts, so that deep within may be implanted the remembrance of what He has done for us.

And let us note that the sign given to us of the Savior is not that of a Child reclining in Tyrrhenian purple, but of one wrapped in poor swaddling clothes; not of One resting on a gilded bed, but lying in a manger.
-St. Bede the Venerable

But if these swaddling clothes seem to you unbecoming, look up and hear the heavenly choir. Should you deplore the manger, raise your eyes a little and see the new star in the sky, proclaiming to the world the Birth of the Lord. If you believe these unworthy, believe that these are wondrous. If you do not hold with the things that savor of lowliness, worship those that are sublime and heavenly.
-St. Maximus

That an angel appears to the watching shepherds, and that the Brightness of God shone round about them, may also be understood in a mystical sense; and this is: that they above others merit to behold the sublime mysteries, who know how to guard carefully their believing flocks. While they dutifully keep guard over their flocks, the divine grace will shine abundantly on them.

-St. Gregory

Collected by St. Thomas Aquinas in “Catena Aurea”

marymajor's Advent Calendar: December 20

December 20


Every valley shall be filled, because the hearts of the humble will be replenished, by the teachings of sacred truth, with the gift of virtues, according to that which was written: Thou sendest forth springs in the vales (Psalms 103:10). And whence again was it said also: And the val shall abound with corn (Psalms 64:14).

...We already behold, we already look upon the valleys abounding in corn, because the mouths of those who are mild and gentle and who seem to the world contemptible, are now filled with the food of truth.


- St. Gregory; Pope and Doctor

marymajor's Advent Calendar: December 19

December 19





What then was it that moved them? It was that which had before moved them, so that leaving their own country they had begun this so weary journey, namely: the Star, and together with the Star the light that God had placed in their hearts, which was to lead them step by step to more perfect knowledge.



For unless it were so they would not have shown Him such great honor, since all that they see here is but poor and lowly. For of the things that fell upon their outward senses there was nothing striking: there was only a manger, a mud hut, a poor mother.




- St. John Chrysostom

marymajor's Advent Calendar: December 18

December 18


What mind can comprehend this mystery? What tongue describe this wondrous grace? Iniquity returns to the ways of innocence, old age to newness of life. Strangers are received into adoption as sons, and they without claim enter upon an inheritance. The evil-living begin to live as righteous, the parsimonious become bountiful, the incontinent chaste, and the earthly heaven minded.

What is this transformation unless the witness of the Hand of God?


-St. Leo, Pope and Doctor

marymajor's Advent Calendar: December 17

December 17


All who are called by the name of priest, are also named as angels, as the prophet testifies; saying: For the lips of the priest shall keep knowledge, and they shall seek the law at his mouth: because he is the angel of the Lord of hosts (Malachia 2:7).

You likewise can reach to the sublimity of this name, if you so wish. For each one among you, in as far as he is able, in as far as he responds to the grace of the heavenly invitation, should he recall his neighbor from evil-doing; should he seek to encourage him in doing what is good; when he reminds him of the eternal kingdom, or of the punishment of wrong-doers; whenever he employs words of holy import, he is indeed an angel.

And let no one say: I am not capable of giving warning; I am not a fit person to exhort others. Do what you can, lest your single talent, unprofitably employed, be required of you with punishment.


-St. Gregory

Highly recommend Advent sermon about St. Paul

Here is another wonderful (and at the same time, very scholarly and thought provoking) sermon by Fr. Cantalamessa, the Pontifical Household preacher.

It is not just a moving sermon but one I'd call a spiritual chiropractor spine realignment, teaching those who read and revere St. Paul how to actually understand his full relationship with God and Jesus Christ. This has been a stumbling block for many Reformation children.

http://www.zenit.org/article-24546?l=english

marymajor's Advent Calendar: December 16

December 16

In Him was life. The earth was made. But the earth that was made is not life. There was in the Wisdom Itself of God, spiritually, the plan from which the earth was made; this is life. As the execution in every work has not life; only the idea in the work lives, because it lives in the mind of the artist.

Because therefore the divine Wisdom, by which all things are made, contains all things in idea which are made according to the divine plan, these are not necessarily living; but whatever is made, there is life in it.

- St. Augustine

marymajor's Advent Calendar: December 15

December 15


The light which enlightens every man coming into this world, came through the flesh; because while present in His Divinity He could not be seen by the foolish, the blind, the wicked, of whom it was said above: “The darkness did not comprehend it.” Accordingly is it said, “He was in the world.”

The heavens, the earth, the sea and all that is in it, are called the world. Again, the lovers of the world are also called the world, but with another meaning.

For did the heavens, or the angels, or the stars, know not their Creator, Whom the demons confess and to Whom all things bear witness? Who then knew Him not? They who loving the world, are called the world. They who love not the world, in the flesh are in the world, but in their hearts they abide in heaven, as the Apostle [Paul] said to the Philippians: "Our conversation is in heaven."


- St. Augustine

marymajor's Advent Calendar: December 14

December 14


Let us learn from the Holy Virgin to be chaste in all respects; who no less modest in speech as in person, quietly gathered to her heart all the proofs of her faith.

– St. Ambrose


Observing all the restraints of virginal modesty, she desired not to make known the secrets she had learned from Christ, but places the things she had read were yet to be accomplished with those she knew were now fulfilled; not breaking forth in speech, but keeping these things enclosed within her heart.

– St. Bede the Venerable

marymajor's Advent Calendar: December 13

December 13


For when Jesus came, and sent forth His Spirit, every valley was filled with good works and the fruits of the Holy Spirit; which, if any one possesses, not alone does he cease to be a valley, but he begins to be a mountain of God.


- Origen

marymajor's Advent Calendar: December 12

December 12


Observe the bountiful diffusion of grace among all at the birth of the Lord, and that prophecy is denied to the unbelieving, but not to the just.

See also that Simeon prophesies that Christ has come for the fall and the resurrection of many.

- St. Ambrose

marymajor's Advent Calendar: December 11

December 11


Whom has she brought forth? Whom? The Lord of nature. For though thou art silent, nature cries out. For She has brought forth as He Who Was born decreed to be born. Not as nature decreed, but He as nature's Lord has made for Himself a new and unheard of birth, that He may show Himself as man; but not brought forth as men are born, but born as God. For from a Virgin He came forth this day, He Who hath set nature aside, and risen above the ways of nuptials.


- St. John Chrysostom

marymajor's Advent Calendar: December 10

December 10


Last Sunday I spoke, I trust fully and sufficiently, of how, prepared and becomingly adorned, we should greet the Natal Day of the Lord, and observe in a worthy manner the coming festival. To observe the festival I repeat, so that though the day's solemnity may pass, the joy of its sanctifying grace may abide.

For this is the special grace of the Lord's Birth Day, that while it goes on to all who in the future will receive it, it still remains with the devout souls to whom it was already given. Let us then be made clean in holiness, clothed in modesty, worthy in heart; and the nearer we approach the festival, the more circumspectly let us walk.

- St. Maximus

marymajor's Advent Calendar: December 9

December 9


Let us have thought for the protection of the widow, for the welfare of the orphan, for the comforting of those that mourn, for the peace of those who live in discord. Let the stranger be given shelter. Let the oppressed be aided, the naked be clothed, the sick cherished; so that whosoever has offered from his own works of justice a sacrifice of righteousness to God, the Author of all good things, may merit to receive from the Selfsame the reward of a heavenly kingdom.

- St. Leo

marymajor's Advent Calendar: December 8

December 8


And let these thoughts be at all times as it were a melody in our hearts, in whatsoever tribulations, so that we may rise above grieving, and give praise unto God, Who arranges all things within all things for our benefit.

Thus we shall overcome all dangers and come to our imperishable crown, to which may we all alike attain, by the grace and mercy of Our Lord Jesus Christ, to Whom, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, be glory and empire and honor, now and for ever and ever, Amen.

- St. John Chrysostom

marymajor's Advent Calendar: December 7

December 7


Resting He feeds the Angels for all eternity, nourishing them with the vision of His eternal and immortal Presence. But know you not, O beautiful One, that thy Vision is become wonderful to thee: it is high, and you cannot reach to it (Psalm 88:6); but behold He has come forth from His holy place, and He Who, lying down, doth pasture the angels, has begun and will restore you to health, and in His Coming we shall see Him Who, while resting and feeding his angels, could not before be seen.


- St. Bernard, Abbot and Doctor