Trying to get the Christmas Spirit

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On Monday, I was pondering the lesson I would share for Family Home Evening. I wanted to come up with something that would help Christmas be more meaningful for me and my family, something that would encourage us all to think about others, to serve more, to really get into the Christmas spirit and remember the true meaning of Christmas.

I started with a countdown chain with a scripture to read each day. I wrote each scripture on a strip of paper, then made the slips into a chain, and each day of December (from now until Christmas, anyway) we would tear off the end link, read the scripture, and maybe talk a bit about what it means. Here is my list of scriptures:
  1. 2 Nephi 25:26
  2. 2 Nephi 11:4-7
  3. Isaiah 9:6
  4. 1 Nephi 10:4-6
  5. Jeremiah 33:14-16
  6. Alma 7:9-12
  7. Mosiah 15:1-4
  8. 1 Nephi 10:9-10
  9. Helaman 8:22-23
  10. Alma 39:17-19
  11. Helaman 14:2-8
  12. Isaiah 7:14
  13. 1 Nephi 11:14-23
  14. Luke 1:26-33
  15. Luke 1:34-38
  16. Matthew 1:18-25
  17. 3 Nephi 1:9-14
  18. Luke 2:1-7
  19. Luke 2:8-14
  20. Luke 2:15-20
  21. 3 Nephi 1:15-21
  22. Matthew 2:1-8
  23. Matthew 2:9-12
  24. D &C 76:22-24
I also found a list of Christmas activities, and I thought it might be fun to make it into a Bingo type game sheet, and see if each member of the family could get "blackout" by Christmas.

Here is the link to my game sheets, in case you wanted to see them. They include such activities as "Read a Christmas Story", "Write a letter to a missionary", "Visit an elderly person in the ward or neighborhood" or "Write in your journal about what Christmas means to you." Some of them are things that we will probably do as a family, like "Go caroling". Some are spiritual, like "Share your testimony with someone." and others are just for fun, like "Watch a Christmas movie."

When I showed them to the kids, the first question I heard was, "What do we get if we do it?"

I'm hoping that if we do even some of these things, we will feel the Christmas Spirit. I hope that we will be thinking, not "What will I get this Christmas?" but "What can I do for others this Christmas?" I hope that we will develop charity. I hope that we will build habits and attitudes that will help us be found on the Savior's right hand when he says, "Verily, I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." (Matt 25:40)

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