Why I decided to Create an Advent Nativity story with Ornaments 

(I knew we weren't going to act out the Nativity…)

When we started having Christmas with our kids, I realized pretty quickly that we were not going to be the family that acted out the Nativity every year.

I love that tradition.

But it wasn't going to be my reality. 

We tried Christmas videos too, but my kids weren't particularly interested.

Those dreamy "let's all sit together, feel the Spirit, and understand the importance of this story" moments?… Yeah. We weren't having those.

Reading the Nativity story straight from the scriptures… (is beautiful for me)… but my kids were still trying to figure out what all those old-English words meant.

So I bought other Advent sets.

They were fun, but something was missing.

I wanted the Nativity story itself to be the focus.

I didn’t want just another Christmas countdown.

I wanted something that would help my kids experience the story of Christ's birth in a way that was beautiful, simple, and tangible.

So…I decided to create it.

The dreaming began.

I wanted the book to be so beautiful that we would treasure pulling it out year after year.

Thankfully, an incredible artist who paints the kind of scenes dreams are made of agreed to take on the vision. Watching her process was amazing. (You can see the results for yourself in the pages.) So many little details to discover. The expressions, the textures, the layers of paper. One of my favorites is on the final page with baby Jesus. Look closely at His swaddling cloth and you'll find the lion representing His family line.

This book is a treasure.

But then we needed ornaments.

And apparently I like making things difficult for myself. 

My heart was originally set on hand-sewn felt ornaments with beautiful stitching.

(Oh, the patient people who worked through that process with me)

But no matter what we tried, they didn't feel cohesive with the artwork. 

And to make them the way I envisioned, the final price would have been far more than I wanted families to have to pay.

So we kept trying.

And searching.

Months into the process, I was led to another idea.

What if we made the ornaments from wood, with dimensional layered cutouts that echoed the paper artwork in the book?

That was it.

Of course, "that was it",  still meant another year of sourcing and something like the fifth…or maybe eighth…round of samples. (I've honestly lost count. Handmade ornaments can be finicky.) But finally, we received a round of samples and knew:

These were the ones.

And then came all the details I never imagined I'd have opinions about.

How long should the hanging loop be?

Ribbon or cord?

What kind?

How big should the gold bead be?

How should everything sit inside the box?

There were so. many. tiny. decisions.

I'll spare you most of them.

But I can't skip the final touches.

The keepsake box.

The gold foil on the book.

Ohhhh, it is all I wanted, at a price I don’t hate myself for asking.

And if you look closely at the cover, you'll notice that it contains little pieces from each of the 12 parts of the Nativity story.

The cover itself is a piece of art.

The artist in me especially geeks out over the juxtaposition of the beautiful gold foil and fine cover against the paper-cut artwork inside.

There's something about it that feels fitting.

The gold hints at Christ's divinity and kingship.

And then you open the book to artwork made from humble pieces of paper—telling the story of the Savior of the world arriving in the humblest of circumstances.

I love that so much.

This really was a project that dipped into my heart and put it in tangible form.

And after more than two years of creating, changing, sourcing, sampling, and obsessing over tiny details, I'm more than thrilled with what it became.

A beautiful book.

12 handmade ornaments.

A keepsake box that can sit on a display shelf, tuck into a cupboard, or go into the Christmas tote until it's time to pull it out again next year.

But ultimately, none of those things are why I made it.

I made it because I wanted my children to know this story.

There is no book or ornament beautiful enough 

to do justice to the story of our Savior's birth.

But with this set, we really tried.

We tried to use the talents God has given us to create something that bears our testimony of Him. And my hope is that when you bring this into your home, it becomes more than something beautiful. I hope your kids notice things in the artwork that you've never noticed. I hope they ask questions you weren't expecting. I hope little hands can't wait for their turn to find the next ornament and put it on the tree. I hope you discover something new in the words yourself. 

And maybe you still won't have that perfectly quiet, everyone-sitting-reverently-by-the-tree Christmas moment. We probably won't either.

But maybe that's not what makes a tradition meaningful.

Maybe it's opening the same box every December.

The experience being new because we are older.. and building on the memories of the past.

Reading the same story.

Hanging the same ornaments.

Watching little hands get bigger each year.

And, somewhere in all those imperfect family moments, helping our children come to know the baby in the manger a little better.

That's the tradition I was looking for all those years ago.

And it's my hope that The Nativity Story can become part of yours.