A new tradition

Recently in blogland, I ran across so many blogs talking about a "Jesse Tree". I had never heard of this before, but I was intrigued. A Jesse Tree is kind of like Advent, which was something my family always did when I was young (I grew up in a Methodist church, this is not a popular practice in Baptist churches so click here if you are unfamiliar with it). The Jesse Tree is based on Isaiah 11:1 which says, "There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots." So the idea is that each day leading up to the coming of Christ, you put an ornament on the tree and have a devotion or study on that person or event in Christ's lineage. What a great way to focus on the real "reason for the season"!

So Mr.Pate and I will be celebrating the coming of Christ this year by taking time to remember God's Word and His divine plan to bring Christ into the world, so that we might have life everlasting through our Savior! Yay!

Well, there are lots of ways to do a Jesse Tree, and most include printing out ornaments and coloring them or making them from felt. I am a lover of Christmas trees and ornaments, so just printing them out didnt appeal to me much- I needed 3-D. So Friday, we set out to find ornaments that would represent each thing for us. I knew we would have to get creative, but I figured we would be able to come up with something...

Fail! Man are ornaments ever pretty generic these days. I found iPod's, cell phones, and santas galore but nothing we could use for our little tree. So we decided we would buy plain ball ornaments and draw the pictures. I was a little worried it would look horrid (and come on, in Christmas decorations looks matter people!), but it was so fun having this quality time together and most of them turned out great mr.pate's turned out great! Mine were pretty rough, but it is the memories that count right??

So here is our new project all ready to go! I'll keep you posted on how this new tradition goes in the pate household! Merry Christmas!

For more information an resources on a Jesse Tree:

• This the devo we bought this year. It is going to be rewritten, but several bloggers recommended it.
• Read Simple Mom's explanation of a Jesse Tree here.
• Shannon at Rocks In my Dryer's post on a Jesse Tree (she was able to buy her ornaments at Hobby Lobby, unlike us).
• A free outline of the scriptures, devo focus and ornament ideas for each day from RCA's website (if I had found this before the one I got I would have just used it for free!).
• Lindsay at Passionate Homemaking's post on their Jesse Tree (she shares some links too).