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In this children’s time, we explore what Jesus might have meant said, ” “Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can you make it salty again? Have salt among yourselves, and be at peace with each other.'” Expect to learn some new facts about salt–and a method for working through metaphors and similes that children can start to practice on their own.

Proverbs has a lot of humor in it. Here are some of my favorites!

The Snowy Day was the first children’s picture book to respectfully depict Black children. Teachers who read it to their students soon reported that it helped African American children see themselves for the first time in books. One teacher wrote to him, according to Deborah Pope, the executive director of the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation:

There was a teacher [who] wrote in to Ezra, saying, ‘The kids in my class, for the first time, are using brown crayons to draw themselves.’ These are African-American children. Before this, they drew themselves with pink crayons. But now, they can see themselves.

You can hear this story read aloud as part of our church’s commitment to sharing picture books featuring Black characters during the month of February.

You can hear the whole service here.

Yesterday marked the Presentation of the Lord at the Temple, a feast that celebrates Jesus’ first appearance as a child at the temple, 40 days after his birth. It’s the end of the Christmas season at our house, and it was the subject of this week’s children’s time at our church, which featured the artwork of icon artist Kelly Latimer.

You can find the whole online service here.

From my youngest:

“Everyone who knows our family knows we love pickles. At Christmas, we hide a pickle ornament on our tree. If you find it, you get to open the first present. I think other families have this tradition too, but it’s special for us because we love pickles so much.
“Here is a picture of our pickle ornament. Everyone can see it now, but my mom will hide it on Christmas Eve.

“We want you to have a pickle ornament, too. We made lots of them from paper and put them in the Sharing Box [an outdoor pantry in our neighborhood]. We hope you like them!”

We are so fortunate to belong to a church that welcomes the full participation of children. During Advent, our family has been able to make contributions to the daily Advent Reflections shared with congregants. In this contribution, my middle child reads the story “Papa Panov’s Special Christmas” by Leo Tolstoy. It’s about 7 minutes long and appropriate for children of all ages.

We hope you enjoy!

This year, I’m sharing a bit about an Advent activity my church did last Advent during our time dedicated to children. Each Sunday of Advent, we introduced a few new characters from the Christmas story, each a tiny porcelain figure. By Christmas, Jesus, Mary, Joseph, Gabriel, and the shepherd were at the manger, under the star, but the Magi had not yet arrived. Each week, children were invited to search for the week’s figures after church each week, sharing where they found them with other children so that everyone could find them. If they shared the location with the adult who led children’s time that Sunday, they received a small stone with one of that week’s figures painted on it as a prize, so that by the end of Advent, they had a Holy Family + Angel nativity scene.

Our children span from 2-12, and some are very familiar and some very unfamiliar with the Christmas story, so I aimed for 5-8 minutes of attentive time and tried to make no assumptions about their knowledge. I briefly told the story this way:

The first person who learned that God was coming to live among people was Mary, but he soon told Joseph. Then he told poor shepherds. We know from these stories that God cared about women and the poor and trusted them with this important news before God trusted anyone else.

But the story of Jesus is for everyone. Along with Mary and Joseph, who were Jewish, God told a number of people the Bible calls “wise men from the East.” We don’t think this just means that they were super smart. We think it means that they were magi. Magi were astronomers who studied the stars, but they werebl also associated with a different religion–Zoroastrianism. Zorastrian priests were very learned in the sciences, and they were always seeking new knowledge. The Bible tells us that the magi knew something that others didn’t–that the baby that had been born to Mary was very special! This reminds us that God wants the whole world to know how important Jesus is. When the angel Gabriel told Joseph that the baby’s nickname would be Immanuel, which means God is with Us, God didn’t just mean that God would be with the Jewish people but that God would be with all the people of the world.

In our manger scene, there are three wise men, which is traditional in many nativities. But we don’t know how many they were or what they looked at. Christians in Syria traditionally say that there were 12 of them! What is important is that God told people from all over the known world that Jesus was born, and whether people were poor and disrespected, like the shepherds, or rich and admired, like the magi, they should come and worship him.

Now that the magi have arrived, our nativity scene is complete! [Show it to the children. Some will notice that an important figure–Baby Jesus–is missing!]

You are right! It’s not complete! Today, we are going to talk about one more Christmas tradition. This one is from France, and people living in places that the French colonized, like Haiti and New Orleans, celebrate today as Three Kings Day, because sometimes the magi are also called “kings.” Hispanic cultures have a similar celebration. To celebrate, they bake a cake–and one of the slices has the tiny Jesus figure in it. Whoever gets the piece with the Jesus in it is the king or queen–or we might say monarch–of Christmas. We have a cake celebrating Epiphany to share after church today, so you may have a piece if you and your grown ups agree. Or, if you don’t like cake, I have a balloon for you instead.*

*As always, it is best if you know the children in front of you. If you bake your Three Kings cake, you can make a version that accommodates allergies, or else you can request a gluten/dairy/egg/nut free one from a bakery. It’s always a good idea to have a non-food alternative available to children. Today, a Christmas ornament, balloon, or small coin might be a good alternative.

This year, I’m sharing a bit about an Advent activity my church did last Advent during our time dedicated to children. Each Sunday of Advent, we introduced one or more figures to our Christmas story.  The figures were hidden in the church each week, moving closer and closer to the Bethlehem, the manger, and the star, and children were invited to search for them after church each week, sharing where they found them with other children so that everyone could find them. If they shared the location with the adult who led children’s time that Sunday, they received a small stone with one of that week’s figures painted on it as a prize, so that by the end of Advent, they had a Holy Family + Angel nativity scene.

The Sunday after Christmas (December 27 in 2020), we sing Christmas carols for the whole service. This week, our focus for children’s time was on gift giving.

Our children span from 2-12, and some are very familiar and some very unfamiliar with the Christmas story, so I aimed for 5-8 minutes of attentive time.

I brought with me four items: a pair of shoes, a Christmas stocking, a plate with cookies and carrots, and a shoebox with grass in it. Here is a rough transcript of what I shared:

In some parts of the world, December 6 is St. Nicholas Day. Others celebrate it on December 19th, and some people don’t celebrate it at all. Did anyone put shoes [showing my shoes] out for St. Nicholas at night and find that, in the morning, they had coins in them? [Children shared what they did for St. Nicholas day.]

[Showing a plate of cookies and carrots.] Did anyone put something like this out on Christmas Eve? We put out peppernuts. What kind of cookies did you put out for Santa? [Children’s sharing.] Did anyone put out something for Santa’s reindeer?

Did of you put out stockings on Christmas Eve? This stocking is special to me, because my mother made it for my daughter, as a gift to her for her first Christmas. Do you have special stockings? [Children share about their stockings.]

[Showing the shoe box of grass.] Next week is Epiphany, when many Christians celebrate when the magi or wise men visited Jesus. In our nativity sets, we often see three magi, but the Bible actually doesn’t tell us how many came. Has anyone here ever put out a gift for the magi? [No one did.] Look what is inside this box. [Show it to children and have one of them announce that it is filled with grass.] Right, it’s grass. We traditionally show the magi traveling by camel, so children in Puerto Rico, which is part of the US, often leave a box of grass for the camels, and they get little gifts in exchange on Epiphany, which is sometimes also called Three Kings Day.

These are all examples of how we give and receive gifts at Christmas. Maybe your family has other traditions, too. Christians around the world all have different customs.

Today at church, we are having a Christmas carol hymn sing. When we sign to God, we are giving God the gift of our voices and praise. Today, we are also saying “thank you” to God for the gifts God has given us. And we’re sharing our gifts with each other, too–like the gift of playing the piano or the trumpet! God loves it when we share our gifts with each other and share our time together to say praise God for the gifts we’ve received.

I then shared that this was our final day of searching for figures for the nativity. Next week, for Epiphany, the magi would join the other figures in our creche. But today, they were still hidden. And like the magi of the story, they were coming from the East (that is, hidden on the East side of the sanctuary). When the children found them and reported back on their location, they received a small prize (in this case, $1).

***Any time you speak to children or adults about gift giving, be sensitive. Invitations to share what they received as gifts may result in comparisons that make some children feel short-changed or others embarrassed. “Did you do X?” is gentler than “Did you get any presents?”, but even this should be asked only if you know the situation of children in your presence. Children in foster care or unstable family situations may not have strong traditions.

 

 

 

This Christmas, we’re sharing 12 Christmas cookie recipes to help you prepare for your cookie parade. And on this final day, I’m sharing with you my very favorite cookie recipe, for Sand Tarts. (Despite the name, they are not tarts at all. And they have nothing to do with sand, either.)

As a native of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, I didn’t realize that these were a regional cookie, and now I’m on a mission to bring them to other parts of the world. They’re a perfect Christmas cookie if you like using cookie cutters and frosting and decorating your cookies, but, to me, they are best served plain, ideally straight from the oven. In that moment, they are still a little soft and incredibly buttery. A few minutes later, they become crispy and are also delicious–no frosting or sanding sugar or cinnamon imperials needed.

You have to refrigerate the dough overnight before you cook these, so plan accordingly. These have a lot of butter, which has to stay cool for you to work with it.

Ingredients

• 3 eggs
• 1/2 lb (2 sticks) of butter
• 2 c. sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 3 c. flour
• additional egg white + 1 tsp water
• Optional: shelled pecans, for decoration; cinnamon-sugar blend for decoration

Directions

1. Beat butter until creamy. Add sugar and beat until fluffy. Beat in eggs eggs.
2. Add salt and vanilla.
3. Add flour, about 1/2 c. at a time.
4. Divide into 4 balls. Wrap each in plastic wrap and refrigerator overnight.

Baking Directions:

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Remove one ball of dough from refrigerator. Lightly flour a work surface and rolling pin. Roll out dough very thin–1/8 of an inch as any more will result in a chewy, not crisp, cookie. Avoid re-rolling dough as this toughens the cookie.
3. Place on an ungreased cookie sheet. Brush with a mixture of an egg white whisked with 1 TBS water or just an egg white; this will produce a glossy sheen. Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar and place a pecan neatly in the center of the cookie. (Alternatively, you can frost and decorate after baking. Or, best of all, leave plain.)
4. Bake 7-10 minutes, beginning to check through the oven door at about 6 minutes. These cookies are unleavened and so will not rise much, nor do they brown very much on the edge. If needed, remove cookie sheet from the oven to quickly check the underside: if cookie is browned, they are done.
5. Remove from oven and allow to cool briefly on sheet before moving to a wire rack.
6. Avoid placing recently cut-out cookies on a hot baking sheet as this will cause the butter to heat too quickly before baking. Instead, rotate pans so that only room temperature pans are being placed in oven.