One of the fun family traditions we keep during Advent is the Jesse Tree. A couple of weeks prior to Advent (i.e. during St Martin’s Lent), the kids gather up a few branches, which I decorate with some cheap, battery powered star-shaped lights that I got from Amazon. Then for each day of Advent, we read a kid-friendly bible story and the kids take turns hanging an ornament on the thee, which depicts that story. This is a great way to anticipate Christmas by counting the days of Advent (actual Advent, which starts four Sundays before Christmas and has 22 to 28 days, not the secular Advent, which always has 24). The children really look forward to this each evening after supper and it has the added bonus of introducing them to the Christian narrative in scripture, despite much of society’s reservations about imposing a belief structure upon a child…