Do You Really Need Another Christmas Event?
Do your students REALLY need another event this Christmas season?
We’ve made it into December, a month which is most famous for containing Christmas.
But you might also know it as the month that literally has less daylight than any other month, the month when families are most likely to experience financial strain, or the month when a person is statistically most likely to die of a heart attack.
December – at least for American families today – is typically the most stressful season of the entire year, and all of that begs one important question:
Do you really need another event this Christmas?
For the last three years, our church staff has tried to schedule a Christmas party and for the last three years it hasn’t happened, and the biggest reason for that is because most of us don’t actually want to have a Christmas party.
We like Christmas. We like each other. We like parties.
But none of us needs or wants another evening scheduled for us during this season. Your students – and most especially their parents – are probably feeling the exact same way. So it’s worth asking again:
Do you really need another event this Christmas?
What you can do instead of an event this Christmas
It’s crazy important for you to be a part of your students’ lives this Christmas, but instead of creating more things for them to do, for you to plan, and for their support; let’s get involved with the stuff that they’ve already got going on.
Christmas Concerts
Or if you’re in public schools, Winter Performances. Your students in band, orchestra, choir, or drama have probably been working for weeks and months to put together these programs. Check them out. We have these expectations that students will show up to hear the talk we spent a day writing. Support the show they spent a month planning.
Even better, other students will want to attend their friends’ performances too. Sit with them and their families to double-up your impact.
Hang Out at the Mall
I’ll admit that this sounds truly terrible, but your students will be doing some Christmas shopping, and they’ll already be at the mall. If they know that you’re hanging out at the food court and will buy them an Orange Julius if they come say hello…
…they’ll come say hello and then some.
Take advantage of the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve.
By the time Christmas has come and gone, people are starting to relax a little bit, parents are back to work, and your students are bored at home literally waiting for something to happen.
Make something happen. The best part of the week after Christmas is that you don’t need to work around school schedules to get some quality time with students. Buy pizza, get milkshakes, and get smaller groups of students together to play everyone’s new (and appropriate!) video games.
Your best opportunity…
Your best opportunity this Christmas is to connect with students and families in the middle of their crazy lives, not to add to their crazy lives.
So this Christmas, I’d absolutely encourage you to share Christ with your students as much as you can and save your big events for later.
What’s your calendar look like for the month of December? Share it in the comments. I’d love to see how you’re managing the crazy too.
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