Hey y’all! We just recently did this family night lesson to kick off one of our family Christmas traditions, and it was short, it was sweet, and it did not result with us at each other’s throats.
I thought I would share this cute tradition we do every year (beginning with a FHE lesson) because it goes well for us and I think it could add to a more Christ-centered Christmas for y’all as well.
In our family, us children are encouraged to be self-reliant and purchase Christmas gifts with our own money, which is great, except for when we aren’t rolling in dough. We decided one year that we knew there were a lot of us siblings, and not a lot of dough in our bank accounts, which consisted of our not-so-steady income of babysitting stints, birthday money, chores, etc. We all knew we would rather get 1 nice gift we would actually use than 3 items of cheap garbage from each other that we would throw away anyway. So, our gift exchange was born.
As for the name ... I wanted SOME sort of more Christ-centered Secret Santa option. Instead of the Elf, you can use the Little Lamb, and I thought, hmmm, what would work for this time of year? Then I thought of Secret Angel. In the back of my mind, I was like is this good? Doctrinally correct? Does it make sense?
Then this quote from Henry B. Eyring popped up on my Pinterest feed! And it said, "Sometimes, you will be the angel the Lord sends to bear others up. Sometimes, you will be surrounded by angels who bear you up." And I was like YESSSSS! OK! This goes PERFECTLY with this Secret Angel tradition. So we went with it! (I have a printable quote of that quote from him, it is too perfect not to use!!)
So it is here that I detail our Secret Angel FHE lesson (and I know there’s the whole “every evening is family home evening now” thing, which is chill! If you count CFM studies as your FHEs *which we usually do, and is all good* you can still just do this as a family activity/tradition, per se.) Enjoy!
As a family, we talk about the messages from the video. The younger kids understand the basic love languages idea, and we talk about how we still want to give each other gifts for Christmas even though we are going to serve through love languages this season!
I put up a Love Languages cheat sheet, and everyone thinks about what theirs would be.
We talk about acts of service and ministering to the one.
On slips of paper, we write information about what we want and what our love languages are — for the gift exchange part and the service part.
All the slips of paper go in a Christmas mug and draw names to see who our Secret Angels will be. When we get the person, we also have that information about them and can use that to serve them throughout the Season & get them 1 nice gift.
To review:
•Secret Angel is a more Christ-centered version of Secret Santa. It involves a gift, but service as well.
•This studio C sketch goes over the Love Languages, and I’ve made a lil cheat sheet about them for y’all as well.
•Each person writes information about themselves, and the kids draw names of which kid they will be buying for and serving.
•All Printables for this lesson are free! **Be sure to share this idea! However, you may not make copies of this, link to the file, sell it as your own, etc.**
•And that’s it! It has been a really fun & unifying tradition on our family, and I’m so grateful to share.
If you love Christ-centered Christmas ideas and lovely lds Christmas helps like these, be sure to follow me on Pinterest!
Annnnnnnd y'all can get the full free packet (which includes the quote, Secret Angel slips to put in the mug, and a Love Languages cheat sheet) here.
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