Advent Calendar – A Modified Approach – Holiday Reading

We started following a modified approach to Advent Readings as a family several years ago. We basically start on December 1st rather than the traditional “4th Sunday before Christmas.”

Here is the schedule we seek to follow:

In addition to following the above schedule for Scripture reading we also read, Starr Meade’s Keeping Holiday.

Dylan loves his family’s yearly vacation to Holiday and wishes it could last all year. When he finds a flyer asking if he’d like to keep Holiday, he encounters a bigger and better Holiday than the one his family has always visited; he also learns that entering it requires the Founder’s authorization. Thus begins Dylan’s quest to meet the one of whom people keep saying: “You can’t find the Founder; he finds you./He’s not just the Founder, he’s the Finder too.”

As Dylan reads of Holiday’s origins, he experiences a number of adventures and meets characters who represent the sights and sounds he always finds in Holiday-characters who explain how each of these familiarities points to the Founder’s previous rescue of the city’s inhabitants. And the more Dylan learns, the more he longs to personally know the one who holds the key to entering the “real Holiday.”

Writing for elementary-age children and older, author, teacher, and grandmother Starr Meade offers a book that families can read together, discovering along with Dylan how God brings a person to faith. Keeping Holiday is also a charming, insightful way to help children grasp the meaning of the Incarnation.

This will be our 5th year in a row reading this book together leading up to Christmas. We basically read a chapter or portion of a chapter most nights aiming to end the book just before Christmas day.

This book is so well written. A captivating story, which keeps us coming back year after year. A clear presentation of the Gospel and the Doctrines of Grace presented in the form of allegory which children thoroughly enjoy.

Order the book (even if you don’t have children), mark your calendar and plan to prepare for Christmas a bit more deliberately as a family this year.

Blessings in Christ,

Joe