40-Day Challenge Day 3

What about Christmas do you value most? Call a family meeting to select your family’s “Top Five Holiday Values.” Take nominations from each family member, decide on a final list, write them down, and post them in a place where everyone can see. This will serve as a constant reminder as you enter the holiday season.

Listen …

Values might include enjoying the family, experiencing an old-fashioned simple Christmas, strengthening personal relationships, exchanging only gifts that cannot be purchased in stores, celebrating Christ’s birth, eating glorious creations from the kitchen, attending musical performances, decorating the house, directing the school pageant, singing in the community choir, relaxing and resting, reaching out to those who are less fortunate, visiting relatives and entertaining friends, and so on.

Ask questions like, how can our values be expressed in our home and lives during Christmas? How can we share our blessings with others?

If, for instance, one of your top five values is “Christmas is a time to spend more quality time together as a family,” ask, “How specifically will we do that? And when?”

If you decide that everyone will play hooky from work and school one day to do nothing but sleep in, play video games, put together a jigsaw puzzle, and bake Christmas cookies (which, now that I think about it, is the best idea I’ve had in a long time), then decide right now when that will be. Mark out the whole day on the calendar so nothing will interfere.

What do you think? Share, discuss, ask questions in the comments below.