This week our boys got together for a dangerous mission. Their purpose? To find out the purpose of gift-giving at Christmas. To prepare, they read the Imagination Station’s newest book, “Danger on a Silent Night.”
This book examines the debate about gift-giving. Should we or shouldn’t we? Since Jesus clearly calls us to take care of the poor, the orphaned, and the widowed, could we better serve him by giving to them instead of our loved ones?
In this story Patrick and Beth travel back to visit the Wise Men. They speak with King Herod and realize the danger that baby Jesus was in from this mad king, and they race to beat his soldiers to Jesus’ doorstep.
As Patrick travels with the Wise Men, wooden trunks containing gifts are mentioned a few times, and I decided that these would make a neat focus for our boys’ time together.
My husband prepped the wood for each boy’s box during last week’s ice storm, and another boy’s dad very generously came to help us assemble them. We could never have completed this project without his help!
First, we got a few nails set into the wood. After donning goggles and getting hammers, the boys were allowed to pound in that round of nails. We kept doing this until they had secured the bottom and four sides of their trunk.
Then the kind dad helped them add hinges and a latch with the power drill. My Little Man was happy to help hold the box still!
He is very proud of his finished product!
The boys did a great job assembling their trunks. It was neat to see them all pounding away with the hammers.
My favorite part came afterwards, though. We went back inside and I read a new Christmas favorite of mine to them: The Sparkle Box. This book is about what we can give to Jesus at Christmas, and it uses a silvery, sparkly box to hold the gifts. We talked about how we could use our trunks for that purpose – and then the boys ran outside to play basketball.
The boys had some neat insights about what it must have been like to be in Jesus’ presence. About how scary Herod must have been and how angry they were with his decisions. About the purpose of gifts at Christmas.
And so I think we hit our goal this month. The boys interacted with literature. They thought deep thoughts about Christmas. They decided that it’s okay to give gifts at Christmas, as long as we don’t get too crazy.
Because really, isn’t that what Christmas is all about? The gift of Jesus, wrapped up in God’s love, sent down to us?
