Catholic Activity: Advent Calendar II

An Advent calendar should be incorporated into every family's Advent. Here are some ideas on how to create a homemade calendar.

DIRECTIONS

There are Advent calendars for keeping track of the days, little doors that open on pictures and symbols and Scriptural texts noted by chapter and verse; these read aloud in the evening can be part of night prayers. Or we can choose our own Old Testament texts, perhaps those we read to accompany the figures on our Christ candle, and make our own Advent calendar for keeping track of them. Or perhaps we will want to make one to keep track of the daily Advent mortifications. Cut from dark green construction paper like a great Christmas tree, the decorations are bright-colored balls, birds, fruits, ornaments of all kinds pasted on, one for each day. This works out very well in a classroom.

All these things gradually prepare our minds for piercing deeper and deeper the reality of that night. The stable, the few shepherds, the star, all focused on the figures of a man and a woman and a tiny, tiny Child.

Activity Source: Year and Our Children, The by Mary Reed Newland, P.J. Kenedy & Sons, New York, 1956