Jesse Tree Advent Scripture & Ornament Calendar

Published by Kristen on December 25, 2012December 25, 2012

Every year during Christmas time my Son and I have a special tradition of doing the Jessie Tree. If you have never heard of the Jessie Tree before, it is an Advent-like Calendar of items for each day leading up to Christmas where there is an ornament that represents a story or concept form the Bible. It starts out with the creation of the world and ends with Jesus. A long time ago some friends got together to create all of the ornaments for each day, and this was before Samuel was even a thought in our hearts. Everyone got the book The Advent Jessie Tree that maps out the ornament idea (like Globe, Heart, Cross, etc) and has a devotional with scripture. Our son loves to put the ornaments on the tree every day!

While I loved the scripture used and the concepts of the ornaments, I found that it was challenging to find the right place in the book and to be flipping between the book and the Bible. Instead what I did was create cards on cardstock for each day that had the title of the theme and the scripture(s) for the theme.

Prevously we just put all of the ornaments in a bag and tried to find the correct one for the day, but I found this pin on Pinterest which gave me the idea to get a shoe holder to store 24 of the ornaments and the verse cards. I also took my Mom’s advice and put a piece of candy in each one, which conveniently there was a lot leftover from Halloween to choose from! The final day was in a bag under the tree to be opened on Christmas day.

In order to help distinguish each of the pockets I glued on felt numbers in green and red and then stitched contrasting circles with embroidery thread. We hung it on our hall closet and it worked out so wonderfully! When it was time to pack up Christmas we just rolled it up with the cards and ornaments in it and put it in the Christmas bin. I’m really looking forward to doing it again this year!