Make Jesus’s birthday the focus of your Christmas celebration!
Amidst presents, feasts, parties, and Santa, it takes a little extra effort to remind our young kids that all this is for Jesus’s birthday. Even as an adult I need the reminder sometimes! I think kids at this young age really respond well to concrete symbols that they can see and touch.
Here are a couple of ideas:
- Buy a Nativity scene that they can play with. Find a Nativity scene meant for kids, or one that is hard to break, and let your kids hold the pieces or play out the story. Better yet, play out the story with them in addition to reading it from a book!
- Actually celebrate Christmas as a birthday. I know some families who bake Jesus a birthday cake and sing Happy Birthday to Him as a way to remind their kids that Christmas is about His birth. We haven’t done this in our family yet because I haven’t been able to get my act together enough to bake a cake, but I love this idea!
- Read the story of Jesus’s birth before the flurry of presents. We try to do this many times during December, but telling the story of Christ’s birth one more time before presents is a great opportunity to remind our little ones that Jesus and our salvation by grace through faith in Him is our greatest gift. You can read the story directly out of the Bible, and you can add in a picture book that tells the story of Christ’s birth in a creative way too. Itsy Bitsy Christmas by Max Lucado is an adorable book that will appeal to little ones. It tells the story of two mice who search all over Bethlehem for the King—and then finally find Him in the manger. This book would be a great jumping off point to explain to kids that Jesus came in order to save anyone who asks Him to forgive their sins and puts their faith in Him. It takes intentional effort to keep the focus on Jesus’s birth when the world of Christmas festivities seems bound and determined to take our attention away from Him. Kids and adults alike struggle with this! But I think the hearts of young kids especially are so open to the truth of the Gospel at Christmas time. A little effort to make Jesus’s birthday more real to them goes a long way.
What other ideas do you have for explaining Jesus’s birth in a way young kids can understand?
