rejesus has a list of creative ideas for Christmas….they’re brilliant! Interactive and useful for work with children & young people of all ages. Check out the list here

• If you are looking for some new images to use on your Christmas presentations this year, we’ve put together a great collection of high resolution pictures which can be downloaded here. They have a ‘light’ theme, lots of Christmas lights, candles and Christmassy goodness! (warning: large images = large file size, so may take a bit longer than you expect to download).
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• Presents: Talk about the idea of giving presents, explore some random gifts that people give, including the box of nothing (which you CAN actually buy for £3.50!!), a rich man who bought his wife an island for Christmas, and children in some countries who are genuinely happy to just have the gift of a proper meal…end up asking the students, what sort of gift do you want to give this Christmas?
• Chocolate Sprouts: A popular idea for a Christmas assembly one of our members wrote about last year on the site. Read the whole assembly here.
• Paperless Christmas is a brilliant website I only just found, but have a look if you haven’t been there before: http://www.paperlesschristmas.org.uk/. It’s full of short films, and you can go on the adventures of Mary & Joseph through 9 videos that appear on billboards along a roadside! Designed for young people.
• Light: Use a candle flame for students to look at during a reflection on the idea of Jesus coming to be light in the darkness. .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) if a movie file of a flickering candle will be of use to you.
• Christmas Crackers: A website full of assembly ideas is available here, including one using a Christmas cracker. Look out for the assembly on this link on the shortest prayer in the world, it’s not for Christmas, but we like it!
• A personal favourite of mine is Charlie Brown’s Christmas, where he experiences ‘holiday depression’ and Linus ends up quoting scripture after Charlie Brown frustratingly wonders what Christmas is really all about. See a clip on YouTube here.
• Our TVs are full of Christmas adverts trying to sell us perfume, toys, electronics and lots of other things most of which we don’t really need….sometimes these adverts give us a great insight into what it is we look for and would like to have or receive at Christmas. Companies who pay millions of pounds certainly do their market research before launching a new ad campaign and so it would be an interesting activity (perhaps) to take some of the most popular Christmas adverts and think about what messages they are communicating (both about the product, and what need it is that this product is appealing to). Here’s a few to get you going: 5 of the best.
• I know some people are bigger fans of this site than others, but the brick testament has the nativity story in Lego. Could be great to use while talking about the Christmas story with some groups.

Innovative Advent Stuff

• Natwivity…if you’re a Twitterer, you can follow the advent season through the ministry of Twitter. Each day, follow the plight of #MaryTweets, #JoeTweets and #AngelTweets as they travel their journey of advent. Follow the story here.
• The advent beach hut by Beyond is out again this year, dazzling Brighton’s seafront with stars, light and all sorts of creativity. A different beach hut is opened each day, see pictures and the story here. The Independent are also covering the beach huts this year.
• We’ve shared about the radio Church Ads a couple of times now, but they definitely deserve their place in our ultimate Christmas resource list! If you haven’t heard the adverts, listen in to any of the four options, including the Christmas story according to a police chase or a chart rundown available here. Humorous and creative stuff!
• ichurch.org have an online Advent Calendar here.

Christmas campaigns

• Christian Aid has lots on their website…whether it’s their Christmas appeal, advent calendars of the big sing, it might be worth taking a look.
• Ok, so you may question why this next entry has made it into my top list, especially in this section, but bear with me on this (and then feel free to disagree!). Starbucks, as part of their participation in the (RED) campaign, has a website which explores love. It has a few different things to read about, look at and do, but I really like this idea. It asks participants (anyone wanting to have a go online) to draw what love looks like. If we mean it that Christmas is about LOVE coming into the world, let’s use this idea of getting our children and young people to picture love. What does love look like in our world, in our town, in our lives? When you look at Jesus do you see any of those things in the way he lived on earth? Is that something to celebrate?!
• The 12 days of Toybox...sing along to the twelve days, as you’ve never sung it before!
• Tearfund’s Top Ten Tips on how to have an ethical Christmas can be found here. Great stuff.

Short Films & Media

• The ever brilliant Proost has some creative stuff that will plug in really nicely to Christmas services, reflections and even lessons…you do have to pay (a bit), but I can say from experience that getting an annual subscription is well worth it. Check out Proost here.
• 6 things that will make your family argue this Christmas on Truetube.
• Christmas…a time for spending? This film,again from Truetube, is helpful in looking at the demand young people put on their parents to buy them more stuff each year.
• Advent Conspiracy: worship more, spend less, give more, love all.

Christian Group Resources

If you’re running groups in schools in this Christmas season, whether it’s a breakfast club, lunch group or after school club, here’s some resources that might come in helpful:

• ‘The coming of the Lord is near’ is a powerful reflection put to Jeff Johnson’s Gloria, might work well with older students, perhaps a sixth form discussion group. This is an advent reflection from the Godspace blog, which has lots of other interesting things to look at and read.
• Ripples in Time is a creative worship service for Advent from Mark Pierson centred around reflecting on the ripple effect of God’s presence. Really beautiful idea.
• WhyChristmas.com is a website packed full of stuff that answers the question ‘why, Christmas?’. There’s loads on the site about the Christmas story, customs and culture and some fun bits too. Check it out here.
• SchoolsLive has free, downloadable, bible-based meeting outlines for Christmas. All three ages groups (8-11, 11-14 and 14+) have outlines on a Christmas theme for both this week and next.

Just for fun…

• You remember JibJab? It’s the site that lets you put your faces into funky, or not, disco moves…well, now you can elf yourself! Elf yourself and your team here.
• Actually this one is more than ‘just for fun’, it’s a link to all the Christmas related cartoons from Dave Walker (cartoon previewed at the top of this post). There are loads of fun, meaningful and creative ways of looking at Christmas and the season of Advent here.
• Finally, if you can bear the music, head over to the biscuit nativity for a couple of minutes of randomness. Like we said, just a bit of fun!

Have a wonderful couple of Christmas weeks in your schools work…feel free to comment & add your own links to this list.

TAGS: lesson, ideas, assembly, advent, creative, video