Christmas Countdown, Day 12

December 12th: The Gift of the Magi

I remember reading this classic by O. Henry when I was about 13 or so and falling in love with the story. Last year, we gave out copies of this story for our neighbor gifts. I just love the selflessness... or the romance. And now that I'm older, it brings back fond memories of those first few years together when we couldn't afford anything at all.

So... for our activity tonight, we read the book and then we wrote a paper on what gift we would give to Jesus this year. We used the handout that I found here at Holy Handouts. It includes a place where you can write down your pledge to Jesus as your gift to him, with a few quotes. One of which is this one from Henry B. Eyring:

"The celebration of Christmas helps us keep our promise to always remember Christ and His gifts to us. And that remembrance creates a desire in us to give gifts to Him."

We also used these cute plain cardboard boxes and decorated them! The kids loved it!

You'll notice that Tori has a few favorite articles of clothing that she is wearing over and over and over again in these posts.

So we put the papers inside the boxes and we placed them under the tree so that we can read them on Christmas Day!

This was our last night with GiGi, so after the activity the kids opened their gifts from my Mom!

Daphne LOVES her new shiny silver boots! She has worn them every day since then. She even tried to wear them to Church on Sunday...
Tori got sparkly shoes and slippers!

I didn't get a good picture, but My Mom gave Isaac a great lego set- he put it together the very next day!

Our Song for tonight was He Sent His Son, which is not really a Christmas song, but it is such a beautiful song!

Our scripture for tonight was John 3:16-17:

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved."