Jesse Tree

This year we've added something new to our Christmas tradition. It's called a Jesse Tree. I had never heard of this until recently. Basically it's an advent calendar of sorts. You can use a little tree, a drawing of a tree, or as in our case a branch from your live tree. Then you have ornaments that correspond with a story from scripture (i.e. a prophesy in the old testament that points to the coming of Christ). Online you can find a list of ornaments with corresponding scripture references for each day in the month of December (all leading up to the birth of Christ). The main reason that I got motivated to make this a part of our Christmas tradition is that I got invited to a Jesse Tree party (btw the name "jesse" tree comes from the prophesy from Isaiah that says that the Christ would come "out of the stump of Jesse" (Jesse being King David's father). So, anyway, the way the party worked was that 25 women were invited. Each woman made 25 of the same ornaments corresponding to one of the days. For instance, my ornament was the little town of Bethlehem. I made 25 of those. Each woman then collected an entire (unique) set. It was a lot of fun and I think it will be a nice thing to remember my time at our church here in Minnesota by. So, it has been fun doing our little devotions as a family each morning. Charlie will read the scripture passage and share a little bit. Then, Callie will pick out which ornament she thinks corresponds with the story and hang it on the tree. Then, we sing a Christmas hymn. Here's our little tree before any ornaments.

Here's what it looks like with all the ornaments on. I had to test our little tree when I first was setting it up just to make sure it would hold them all.