Keeping Watch Over Their Flocks By Night

When someone else plans a major celebration of Christmas that we can participate in, we leap at the opportunity! And the annual Real Life Church’s Family Christmas Celebration is always a highlight for our family. We put a little extra spin on it this year by incorporating it into a day entitled “Keeping Watch Over Their Flocks By Night”. The title is based on Luke 2:8, “And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night” in which the shepherds received good news of great joy of Jesus’ birth. As a result, our objective was to spend a whole day having fun with all the holiday variations of “flocks”.

We started with the traditional “flock” of sheep by making and decoration some sheep cookies. We also incorporated the “flock” of neighborhood turkeys and brought our Finnish ice wreaths to the neighborhood forest for them to enjoy. Given that we have a new Christmas tree this year, we decided to jazz up the old one by doing the Pinterest-y thing of “flocking” it with faux snow to create an outdoorsy “natural” look before moving it to the basement. And lastly, we wrapped up the evening with Pastor Jim tending to his “flock” (ie: congregation) with our nighttime Family Christmas Celebration service. And it was perfect coincidence that the kid’s play was entitled “The Drowsy Shepherd” and was all about a shepherd and his flock on the night of Jesus’ birth!

ACTIVITIES:

• Flock of Sheep Cookie Decorating

• Flocking Christmas Tree

• Ice Wreaths to Flocks of Neighborhood Birds

• Real Life Family Christmas Celebration

• "While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks" - Craig Duncan

FOOD:

• Shepherd’s Pie

• Sheep Cookie Cutouts

INTERESTING READS & CONTEXT:

• “Keeping watch over their flocks: The shepherds of the Nativity”