Celebrating Giftmas with the Advent Calendar

Cheesy Advent Calendar

I hate Christmas.  Growing up, it was a time guaranteed to bring out the worst in my parents who often would fight it out on Christmas Eve over how much money mom could spend on presents for us.  (We won't even get into the fiasco that was the years my father bought presents).

But now that I have rug rats of my own, I am constantly trying to find ways to celebrate the season in a way that both honors the birth of a man who preached peace and doesn't leave the kids feeling like they missed out on the Giftmas side of things.  This year my six year old is spending Xmas with his father, so it was even more of a challenge, especially since my spoiled little man really doesn't need two Christmases worth of toys.  That's were Cheesy Advent Calendar, purchased from big box craft store came in.   

I've spent the last few weeks scouring the Interwebs looking for Advent ideas as a way of celebrating without focusing entirely on the getting side of things.  Ideas out in the World Wide Web were sparse (it seems that a lot of people punted after coming up with a dozen or so ideas), so I'm going to post my list here.  The cool thing about the advent is that it can tailored to any family's specific ideas and beliefs fairly easily, as well as the age of the children involved.  I'm hoping to add a lot of service projects on to my calendar as my son grows.  This year is very craft heavy, and we may end up as epic craft fails, but hopefully all little man will remember is that we tried.

Our Advent Calendar (edited to add the results of each activity)

*1  Read the story of Baby Jesus and make a Nativity (was strangely excited at the idea that Jesus had a birthday....very insistant that Mary be significantly taller than Joseph....)
2  Decorate tree and drink hot chocolate with marshmallows (Little man refused the hot chocolate, of course)
3  Watch a Charlie Brown Christmas (He wasn't impressed at first, but it won him over by the end)
4  Buy a toy for a needy child  (He was confused by this, so maybe next year....)
5  Build a Plane Workshop (He loves these and they're free!)
6  Make Snowman pictures (This was an epic craft fail)
7  Read the Polar Express (Loved it)
8  Take Christmas tree pictures  (Put up with holding his sister in his lap for about 15 minutes)
9  Sing Christmas songs (never got around to organized singing, though he burst out in song many times)
10 St Nicholas Day (traditionally celebrated 6 December) (this confused him)
11 Go see a movie (Went to see Rise of the Guardians--we all loved it)
12 Salt Dough Ornaments (we ended up going with shrinky dinks because it looked cooler)
13 Make Christmas cards (this was a mixed bag....the child happily made cards...in pink, blue and purple)
14 Look at the Lights (The biggest hit of all of the ideas, he loved this, especially since we went to an organized display)
15 Visit Santa (He was very excited and actually smiled for the camera!)
16 Make Paper snowflakes (never got around to this) 
17 Read The Best Christmas Pagent Ever (never got around to this)  
18 Make Gingerbread crayons (ran out of time)
19 Make peppermint bark  (epic cooking fail)
20 Make gingerbread cookies (cheated and made chocolate chip instead)
21 Watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas (I found the man-child watching the DVD in his room before we could all get together to watch it....he loved it anyways and watched it four times)
22 Make wrapping paper (didn't happen :(  )
23 Reighndeer ornament (Also didn't happen)
24 wrap presents (this became mommy wrap....oh well....)

*I had to adjust our calendar to match up with little man's Christmas vacation, so we are actually starting our calendar on the 27th of November.