Nativity Advent Calendar

We're not a religious family.  So, what's with the Nativity Advent Calendar then?  Well, we may not be religious, but we do celebrate Christmas and we are a moral and honest family.  We approach it as a celebration of hope and peace, love and family, with beginnings a very, very long time ago.  I firmly believe that everyone should be aware of the real reason a holiday takes place, especially when it's over run with gimme, gimme, gimme!  So I wanted to look for a way to bring make the story of the first Christmas is a Special Story in our family, a way for Silas to really know it well, in a fun way.  At the same time I noticed many posts around the web for homemade nativity calendars, there was also a great sale on at the Fisher Price website.  I know, I know, here I am preaching about non-materialism (sort of, anyhow, in an indirect way) so I buy three different Christmas sets from Fisher Price?  But honestly, I sort of look at this as a special family tradition just beginning - I hope to use this set every December for the next twenty years!

Here's a peek at what we've been doing every night.

This is the simple little gizmo I put together on November 30th.  It's 20 pocket hanging shoe organizer.  Originally I was thinking I needed a 24 pocket shoe organizer, but realized there are pieces that are way too big to fit in the pockets anyhow.  Those pieces I put in gift bags, with their proper day affixed.  At the time I didn't know what in the heck I was going to do with them, but I ended up handing Silas a small picture on a paper, a clue.  For example, I drew a sock, he ran to his sock basket.  There he found a picture of a mitten, so ran to where his mitts are kept, and so on, until he found the gift bag.  He loved those days best of all!  

I tried to order all the pieces into similar to the order they appear in the story we read.  By the way, this is the version we read:

It has a linen cover and lots of gold, a simple, honest story and, most importantly, really beautiful, magical illustrations.  They almost seem to glow!  It really helps this story become a Special Story for us.  We read it each and every night.  If I'm extra tired, or Silas is extra tired, I try and skip little bits, but he knows it too well for that. He can even say frankincense now!

This is part of the set I bought.  Like I mentioned before, I bought them online during a sale.  There are actually three sets:  the Nativity Set, the Inn at Bethlehem, and the Three Wise Men.  I love that they have a goat and a black sheep.  Silas loves the cart for the donkey.  He sets the whole thing up every night after reading the story, adds the new piece, then walks them through the story.  Before going to bed, he makes sure everyone is cozy and comfortable for the night, stuffing animals and people alike into tents, the Inn and the Stable.  Here's an action shot I took tonight as he re-read the story to all the characters from the set:

And just before I go, I wanted to add that this isn't something I spent a long time on.  I printed out some snowflakes, wrote numbers on them and attached them to the shoe organizer with clothes pins.  Figuring out what order to put each item in probably took the longest  - but I'm a bit of geek that way and enjoyed that part!