I Survived Christmas Eve Service With My Kids

I’ve been doing this parenting thing for over a decade now and while I like to think I am a care-free parent, there is ONE annual event that sends me into hyper-active helicopter mom mode….. Christmas Eve Church Service.

At our church, child care is open for kids under 3. All kids over, are invited to “big church” so that families can worship together. The idea, brilliant. All thought is put into action on the church’s part to make this as smooth as possible for parents. There are crayons and coloring pages for the kids. This year, there were kazoos so the kids could kazoo along and hot chocolate and cookies.

Christmas Eve Service

Our pastor on many occasions has expressed for parents to just let kids be kids and understand that we can’t expect them to act like adults. I AGREE, with the exception of CHRISTMAS EVE SERVICE. Did I mention it’s a candle light service? The fact they have been doing this for years and a child hasn’t set the place on fire – should show right there that there is a God.

While our church is VERY casual and come-as-you-are…. the kids have Christmas outfits which of course, I am sure just sets the mood for bad behavior.

This year, we are in let’s not stress Christmas mode. We decided to do Christmas Eve Eve service. The boys hadn’t napped. I had a thrown out back. My son smelled like rotten chocolate milk from an incident earlier in the day. I didn’t care, we were going to make it to church because this is the reason for the season. The following words were uttered from my mouth during service. Did I mention that we attend a grace-based church? 🙂

Don’t touch people

Poke, touch – poor old guy in front of us is trying to NOT act annoyed.

Shhh…

What better time to have a discussion about dinner than when the pastor is talking about the eternal gift of salvation.

No blowing the kazoo during prayer

In the kids defense, our church handed out kazoos for everyone to kazoo along with the song… except my son likes to kazoo along with the prayer….

Stop coloring the chair

I now know what the church chair fabric is the way it is… very durable, I need a sofa made out of that stuff.

Tell your brother you are sorry for biting him

We have an ankle biter.

Finger out of the nose

Straight up the nose.

Tell the man thank you

The gentleman behind us showing all kinds of grace to our crazy crowd — even picking up the crayons 5 times until I finally said, to not worry about it.

Take the candle out of your nose

Yes, the candle was up his nose.

Don’t wave the candle

Candles lit, all is beautiful until the little starts dancing and waving the candle.

Keep the candle straight

The pastor went over what to do. Bend the unlit candle to light, keep the candle straight. Yes, I see the wax going everywhere.

Don’t eat the wax

It isn’t gum, keep the wax out of your mouth.

No hitting

Does Jesus like HITTING? I didn’t think so.

70 Minutes of Church DONE

And 70 minutes of wrangling our monkeys, we had made it. Well kind of. My husband did have to leave with a screaming child once. Then on the way out to the car, our 3-year-old had the mother of all tantrums. We heard a girl walking by him whisper to her mom “Did I ever do that as a child?

We celebrated Jesus with our church family – that was our main goal and we did it! Thankfully without setting the church on fire….

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