25 Days of Christmas – Nativity Advent Countdown

Are you looking for a fun new nativity advent countdown idea? This simple plan has your family share just one (or sometimes two) scripture verses a day as you talk about the shepherds, wise men, Mary and Joseph and of course baby Jesus as you work your way through the season.

In this 25 Days of Christmas Advent Countdown, you’ll share a scripture verse, add a character to your nativity scene, and be reminded of the reason for the season all December!

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25 Days of Christmas
Nativity Advent Countdown

Setup:

• Print out the 25 Days of Christmas Countdown Sheet
• Plan out your nativity figures for each day or week
• Make a schedule for your family, daily or weekly
• You can incorporate the scripture verses into an advent countdown calendar, if that works best for your family.

Overview:

• This activity is setup by “weeks” with the first week incorporating December 1st to 4th so that the next 3 full weeks get you to December.
• You can read all of the verses for the “week” on just a single day if that is easier for your family, like maybe a Sunday afternoon activity while you light advent candles (like these advent candles on Amazon), or you can spread it across the 25 days leading up to Christmas. It’s flexible – so make it what will work best for your family!
• Spend time discussing the verse, if you want to add additional conversation to each day. You can lead with questions like, “How would you feel if you saw an angel?” or “Why do you think the shepherds were the first ones to hear the good news that Jesus was born?”
• You can add additional elements to the activity, like incorporating the scriptures cut out as strips for your advent calendar. Or add one nativity figure to your scene per day/week or whatever interval works best based on the number of pieces your nativity scene has.

How I’m Using this Advent Nativity Countdown:

Each night, we are gathering around to grab out a small felt character and scripture strip from our advent calendar. The felt characters represent (as best as I was able to) the symbols of the scriptures.

We’ll also discuss a little bit about the scripture, especially as they start to build upon themselves asking the kids to remind me what we’ve already learned about the shepherds or the wise men, for example.

We are also lighting Christmas advent candles this year. You light one each Sunday the 4 weeks before Christmas and then a final white candle on Christmas Eve representing the coming of Christ.

It’s short, sweet, simple, and reminds us all each day what this special holiday season is really all about. It can be easy to get overwhelmed with the holiday season, so I didn’t want anything too length or complex. Especially with 4 young boys in our home!

25 Days of Christmas
Nativity Countdown Printable

I’ve created a free printable version of this scripture a day nativity countdown activity. The document is 6-pages. The first two pages are a day-by-day outline with each of the scriptures.

On the 3rd and 4th page are printable tags you can cut out to incorporate into any of your advent calendars, if that’s easier to have them cut out and ready to go and organized on your calendar.

On pages 5 and 6, you’ll find the same scriptures in a cut-out printable form, but without dates. This will let you adapt the printable to fit your own schedule or rearrange the order, should you need to.

You can print just the pages you need or pull up the PDF each day to read off your digital copy. This printable is free for your own personal, home, and any church uses. If you’d like to share this resource — please direct people right to this link to grab their own copy!

Click here —> to Print the 25 Days of Christmas
Nativity Advent Countdown

How will you use this nativity advent countdown idea this holiday season?