The Best Christmas Planning You Can Do in June

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MarkTheHerald.com

✦ The Herald Dispatch ✦

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I know what you're thinking. It's June. The Christmas music isn't even in the stores yet. The last thing you want to do is think about December.

And you're right — mostly. I'm not here to suggest you start shopping or decorating or planning your Christmas Eve menu. That would be absurd, and I have more respect for your summer than that.

But here's something I've observed in years of ministry and family life: the families who have the most meaningful, most unified, least chaotic, most genuinely memorable Christmases are the ones who made two or three small decisions in the summer.

Not big ones. Not elaborate ones. Just a couple of small, quiet decisions that gave December a shape before it arrived.

Decision One: Choose Your Anchor Tradition

The families I know who have the most meaningful Christmases have one thing in common: they have at least one anchor tradition that is non-negotiable. Something that happens every year, in the same way, without being scheduled because it's just what the family does.

The anchor tradition is the difference between a Christmas that feels meaningful and a Christmas that feels like a production. Productions exhaust everyone. Traditions restore people.

If you don't have an anchor tradition yet — or if the ones you've tried haven't stuck — June is a good time to think about what you want yours to be. Not to plan it in detail. Just to name it.

To say: this year, we're going to do this specific thing, and we're going to do it on purpose, and we're going to do it again next year.

It could be a meal you make together. It could be a service project. It could be a Christmas Eve ritual — candles, a prayer, a reading. It could be a book you read aloud.

Whatever it is, name it now while you have space to think clearly. December doesn't give you space to think clearly.

Decision Two: Order the Christmas Book Now

If reading a Christmas book aloud as a family is something you want to do this year — and I'd argue it's one of the highest-return investments of thirty to sixty minutes you can make in December — June is when to order it.

Not because it will sell out, necessarily. But because ordering it now means it'll be on your shelf in October, which means you'll remember to put it under the tree or into the Christmas Eve basket or wherever it belongs in your tradition, rather than realizing in the third week of December that you meant to do this and never got around to it.

I'm obviously biased here, but MARK! The Herald Angel was built specifically for Christmas Eve family reading. It's 64 pages. It reads in about an hour. It works for every age in the room

simultaneously. It makes people laugh in the first half and catches them completely off guard in the second.

Order it now. Forget about it until November. Find it in November and feel like you've already won.

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Decision Three: Download the FREE Advent Devotional

The free MARK! Advent Devotional Guide is available at MarkTheHerald.com right now. It's 12 days, three sessions per week, organized around Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love.

Download it in June. Save it to your phone or print it and put it somewhere you'll find it in November.

When the first Sunday of Advent arrives and you're looking for something to anchor the season, you'll already have it.

These three decisions — name an anchor tradition, order a Christmas book, download a devotional guide — take about fifteen minutes combined and cost less than twenty dollars. They are the small, quiet, summer decisions that make December feel less like a production and more like a season worth inhabiting.

Fair dinkum Christmas planning, starting in June. You've got this.

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✦ Order MARK! The Herald Angel and download the free Advent devotional at MarkTheHerald.com. Summer is the right time to start.