Meaningful Christmas: Jesse Tree

Hard to believe, especially here in Arizona, but Christmas is just around the corner. If you are looking for a wonderful way to make Christmas meaningful I highly recommend a Jesse Tree. This will be our seventh year doing one and we love it.

You can start with Advent or you can just start on December 1st and go through Christmas Day, which is what we do. Each day we read the Bible and a short devotional then hang an ornament on a little tree. There are many websites out there to give you ideas and there is no right way. Each family does it a bit differently.

There are kits you can buy, but it is easy to just make your own ornaments. They ornaments can be printed on paper or if you get real creative you can buy items to hang as ornaments that are a bit more three dimensional (like a mini-globe, twine, wheat, etc). The tree itself can be a branch that is secured in a pot or you can use a mini-Christmas tree. That is what we do and it works well. There are free online devotionals or Jesse Tree books you can buy.

One of these days I want to try and update my paper ornaments to something like this…

The children really get a lot out of it. I think the review of familiar Bible stories helps them and it reminds us each day about the reason we're celebrating! It also helps the kids understand the Old Testament is just as much about Jesus as the New Testament and makes it very clear that God had everything all planned out long before Jesus was even born!

The first ornament is the stump of a tree, from the verses (Isaiah 11:1-2) A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. We talk about how God can take a tree that has been cut down (dead) and give it the hope of new life through a new shoot (Jesus). Then we'll move onto creation, the fall, Noah, Abraham, etc.

If you are interested, here are some links I found long ago in 2007 (they actually still work!):
Jesse Tree Instructions and Printable Ornaments
Free Devotional 
Another Tree with Printable Ornaments
Yet another option
or search "Jesse Tree" on Google or Pinterest

[Note: This is an edited re-post. I wanted to share it again a few weeks before December so if you're interested in giving this a try you have time to get things printed.]