I love Advent and candles. Here’s a really simple idea for using them to develop thankfulness in the run up to Christmas. It doesn’t take long, but a few moments each day will help develop a habit of thankfulness in a month when so much is trying to pull us away from it.
You might find it easiest to choose a time of day when you do this, as this ritual will help make it easier to do. We do ours over our evening meal together, but you might like breakfast or lunch or just before bed. Do what works for your family, and don’t worry if not everyone joins in! This is purposefully a thankfulness activity, so those who want to can thank God, and others can be thankful. Children age 7+ might like to invent their own fill-in-the-blank sentences, so you could print these ones out and leave spaces for them to add some fun ideas of their own.
In the past, I’ve sent one of these to each of my god-daughters to do with their families with some ideas for prayers they could say when they light the candle, so if you’re a God Parent, you might like to do that.
We’ve also made our own Advent candles, one with number transfers and another pressing 25 blobs of beeswax to decorate our own candles.
Light a candle each day in Advent (it could be an Advent candle but doesn’t need to be) and spend a minute or two taking it in turns to complete the sentence for that day (1 is December 1st). Here are some examples:
1. I am thankful for …
2. I am thankful that I have …
3. I am thankful for people who …
4. I am thankful that today …