Children, Youth and Families Blog: Advent and Christmas

Published: Thursday September 19, 2024

This blog will provide resources to help you with planning your Children’s, Youth and Families Christmas activities. 

Recent research has found that people do want church to be a part of their Christmas celebrations and traditions, its one of the times when the secular and sacred overlap in meaningful and significant ways. The research found that people are looking for:

  • Joyful Carols that they recognise
  • Good food
  • Classic Hymns
  • Unity of people
  • Classic Nativity plays and stories
  • Oranges with Candles stuck in them

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Follow the Star: Calm and Bright

The Church of England’s theme for Advent and Christmas 2024 is Follow the Star: Calm and Bright, which draws on the world-famous carol, Silent Night:

“Silent Night! Holy Night!
All is calm, all is bright…”

Click here for more details and resources.

As well as the nationally produced resources, there are loads of other ideas, suggestions and resources available – here’s a suggestion of a few from us:

Christingle

The Children’s Society have amazing resources especially brilliant are the Muddy Church sheets (although not cheap to print all that orange). 

School Creative Christingle

Provide a pack with some ideas for pomander style Christingles from the web and ask them to create in class or at home and bring to an outdoor service to light up a pathway or area. 

You will need: Cloves, water based marker pen, red tape candles. 

1. Think about the design you want for your Christingle. Lightly sketch it out on the surface of the fruit using washable makers. Keep it simple! 

2.  Using a cocktail stick poke holes along the design you sketched. The holes should be about 1cm apart  

3. Wipe off your fruit to clean away the marker lines. 

4. Place one clove in each of the holes. Poke the long end of the clove into the holes. 

Christingle Garden

Mark a Christingle out on a grassy area using a water based temporary spray marker you can then use big twigs and other things you find to add the extras to the Christingle – you could plant up the circle with spring bulbs which will come up when the light returns and days grow longer. 

Christingle Scavenger Hunt

Hide all the Christingle components and create clues for finding them. Once they have all the components they can make their Christingle.

The Golden Christingle  

Hide a ‘golden Christingle’ among some of the oranges ones, with prizes for those who find it (your very own version of Willy Wonka’s golden ticket!). 

Christingle Trees

Use the trees in your area as your oranges– think of the branches as the sticks, the leaves, or whatever the tree produces as the good things God gives us all the life the trees sustain as the candle. Tie red ribbons around the trees they can help us think of Jesus and his life giving love. 

Advent

24 Things to do in Advent

Hang this up on your wall and do a different activity every day. 24 things to do in Advent

Advent Path

Find a brick or stone path. Decorate a brick or stone each day along the path.

Community Advent Calendar

Similar to a scarecrow festival, each neighbour makes a person or animal from the Christmas story to place in their garden.

The Christmas Build-Up

24 simple, powerful and manageable moments for families to explore the Christmas story together through Advent. The Christmas Build-Up

Nativity

Living Nativity

In or out of church – a bit like Experience Christmas. Especially wonderful if you have access to real animals and adults in costume playing the roles rather than children. Create a den/stable and use different areas for the action, e.g. shepherds in fields.

Scratch Nativity

Encourage all the parents in your Toddler Group or Messy church to act out the Nativity for their children – no prep, no script but lots of teatowels and fun

Shepherd/Angel Races

Children dress up for the race. Follow the clues to find where the baby is and run back to Bethlehem.

Decorations

Christmas Tree Festival

Either using your available trees and bushes or inviting organisations to bring their own. Get your community involved in decorating and displaying their trees or bushes.

Church Christmas Wreath

Get the children involved in creating a wreath to hang on your church door.

Prayer

Prayer Doves

Linked to the theme from Calm and Bright, a free resource

Prayer Spaces in School

Have loads of advent and Christmas ideas which can be adapted to use in churches, parent and toddlers, messy church or Sunday services

The word Leadership spelt out, with Committed to Transformation written underneath.

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