My husband and I recently moved our family to a new neighborhood. When we arrived, I reached out to our new ecclesiastical leaders to let them know we were here to help out in any way we could.
Not long after, I was asked to coordinate activities for the sisters in the area.
The first activity the committee was in charge of was in November. The criteria we were given was “something Christmasy.”
Brainstorming
That left it pretty wide open. Of course, I searched for Christmasy themes for large gatherings on pinterest and google. I found a couple of blogs that shared ideas that I considered, but I didn’t find anything that fit what I was envisioning. Finally, I counted how many days there would be left until Christmas from the scheduled night of the activity.
40 days…
Now I was on to something! There are plenty of correlations that go with the number 40 in scripture, right? I was still a little unsure how to incorporate that number into the evening until…
Ah-hah!
I started to divide the number 40 in various ways. Because it can be divided evenly by 10, I played around with the number 4. The 4 Magi…The 4 gifts of Christmas… YES! That’s it! The 4 gifts of Christmas rule for gift giving. I decided to take the idea and run with it.
A little background
I try to use the 4 Gifts of Christmas rule (to an extent) with my children every year.
If you haven’t heard of the 4 Gifts of Christmas rule, it’s a way to keep Christmas purchases simple and purposeful. There’s even a little rhyme to remember the gift categories.
- Something you want
- Something you need
- Something to wear
- Something to read
A spiritual twist
So, I took those four categories and tried to look at them from a gospel perspective.
- Something we want is joy
- Something we need is each other
- Something to wear is our testimony
- Something to read…is pretty straightforward
Of course there are plenty of other possibilities for these categories. For example, wear a smile and talk about positivity. Discuss prioritizing or goal setting in order to get what you ultimately want in life. You could have someone with a background in relationships or counseling share how to improve this needed life skill. So many options.
Planning Meeting
I took the ideas listed above to a meeting with the committee and we talked about how to bring it all together without spending too much time sitting and listening to speakers (which is kind of what I’d pictured initially). Just goes to show how important a committee is. I hadn’t taken into account the time constraint of one hour when I’d thought about having speakers present on each of the four topics. How tedious might that have been?
By the end of our first planning meeting, I didn’t feel like we’d come to a much of a consensus about how the activity would go…
…except for with regard to refreshments
I have to put this here. Food is a crucial part of any successful event and we were all in accord when it came to deciding on pumpkin desserts for our refreshments. At that point, I knew we’d all get along just fine.
Back to the planning meeting
Don’t get me wrong, there were great ideas shared. For example, one idea related to the “something to read” category. It was to invite the sisters to write down their favorite books and authors. This would encourage everyone to discover new reading material and also help sisters unite over their genres of choice.
A somewhat lofty suggestion
One of my sisters in the committee suggested we include a craft as part of the evening. Great!… I’m not the craftiest person, but I was willing to try to tie it in somehow.
Anyway, you see how the sharing of ideas in that first planning meeting made it almost more difficult to decide what to do? So many good ideas.
My own planning session
That night I went on a drive.
I prayed to know how to organize The 4 Gifts of Christmas activity so that the sisters would be excited to attend and leave feeling uplifted.
The inspiration came. We would have one table set up for writing testimonies and another table for book recommendations. The craft would take place in a central location and the refreshments would be near the front of the room with little questions in a jar on the table to help the sisters get to know each other better. All 4 gifts would be present.
Now to figure out the craft
Again, I searched online for inspiration. There are so many great Christmas crafts! I liked this simplistic nativity, but our activity was going to be before Thanksgiving and I wasn’t sure if very many would be interested that far in advance. I kept up the search until I found this. It was perfect for the “something you want” category!
Fast forward
With the craft supplies placed on rain-check for us to pick up later, refreshments taken care of and a speaker assigned, there wasn’t a lot more for us to do besides set-up the night of.
“The night of” came. Everyone pitched in to help. The craft was simple and fun. Our speaker shared her thoughts of finding joy despite setbacks and trials.
The event was well attended and those who came, left smiling. Success!
