Making Advent Meaningful at Home

When families show their children that their faith matters in their day to day lives at home, it has a bigger impact on how they will practice their faith throughout their lives than anything else. That’s not just a made up statement – the 2014 report Hemorrhaging Faith: Why and When Canadian Young Adults are Leaving, Staying and Returning to Church stated just that.

This simple piece of information is the foundation for The Jesse Tree Project, an initiative of the Youth and Family Ministry Vision Strategy and Support Team. A Jesse Tree can be sort of an Advent calendar, a way to countdown to Christmas while hearing the stories of the family of Jesus all the way from the very beginning up to His birth, with an ornament for a tree each day with a symbol representing that story.

We've written a reading and reflection guide, and created a set of printable ornaments that families can print off (or a parish could print them off and provide them to families, or families can request a printed copy to be mailed to them by emailing youthandfamily@nspeidiocese.ca). 

There's a lot of ways that these could be used, but the most straightforward version is this: Each day through Advent, families can colour one of the ornaments, read the story from scripture for the day, answer a few questions together, add the ornament to their tree, and pray together. 

It's an easy, short-term activity that families can easily make happen at home to both dig deeper into the stories that provide the background for the birth of Christ and to actively practice their faith, and make it clear that faith matters in their every day life. 

This project was made possible by a generous grant from the Growth for Ministry Fund.