Celebrating Advent in Your Home — With Rebecca and Stephen Grabill

As we look forward to Advent and Christmas, Father Dave welcomes Rebecca and Stephen Grabill to talk about how to live out these seasons in your home. They share ideas for liturgical living in their new book, “The Joy of Advent: Family Celebrations for Advent & the Twelve Days of Christmas.”

Rebecca explains the years that went into creating intentional Advent traditions at home. “It’s something that the Lord started growing in our family more than 20 years ago,” she says. “It has been a cornerstone for our family. Even for our adult kids, the memories they have of ‘doing Advent’ are some of their richest, most treasured memories. They want to recreate that in their generation and beyond.”

Stephen and Rebecca explain the importance of the domestic church, which Stephen describes as “how we do faith formation in our families.” Rebecca adds, “Faith grows at home. I think there’s an issue in our current culture where a lot of kids who grew up in the faith don’t end up carrying it through [and] leave the church in their young adulthood…One of the solutions is don’t outsource faith formation. Your church starts with mom and dad around the dinner table. Those seeds get planted there and get watered there.”

Their book offers a daily set of prayers, Scripture and activities to help families live out Advent and Christmas traditions at home. “I still remember sitting there at the dining room table with our oldest son, who was 3 years old at the time,” Rebecca recalls. “He’s tearing into that little Advent calendar with the chocolates behind each cardboard door, and I thought, ‘This can’t be all there is to the build up to Christmas.’ There’s got to be a way to make Christmas meaningful and for him to grow up understanding what is really going on with Christ becoming in flesh as a baby. That led us to the Jesse tree tradition.” In addition to their book, the Grabills created a website and newsletter with resources including creating your own Jesse tree, Advent wreath, and more.

While the exact dates of Advent change each year, Stephen explains how they created the book to be used every year from December 1st through January 5th. “If you do those 37 days in a row, and just engage with it in some way, you will have intentional seasons of worship,” he says. “It’s about sticking with Advent and keeping your mind focused for those 37 days. It’s a new habit, which has amazing spiritual riches.”

As the parent of two young children, Krista asks Rebecca and Stephen for one easy tradition that can help create a more meaningful Advent season. Rebecca says, “One super simple thing is before bed, select a special Advent prayer. Pray that prayer over your child; something short, something simple, and it doesn’t have to be different every day.”

“It could even be something that you memorize, and they end up memorizing it with you, so that as they’re falling asleep, that prayer is playing in their head,” she continues. “That’s a treasure you give them now, and it’s a treasure that they can keep with them in the long run.”