The Advent Jesse Tree

This year is the first year we're doing the Jesse Tree. One of the girls at church organized a group of women for an ornament exchange, and it was so fun. We each signed up for one of the ornaments and made 25 of them, so we left the ornament exchange party with 25 different ornaments, each representing a different story from the bible. We each ordered the book that goes with it, so you read the story in scripture and read the devotional in the book each night. We're really enjoying this new tradition!

Jacob reads the first story on December 1 and holds the first ornament, a globe. It's the ornament that we made. Each night when you pray after the devotional, you pray for the family of the woman who made the ornament.

This is the first tree that Christian and I had, and it's been in his bedroom every year since we've been getting real trees with Jacob. We may get another small tree on after-Christmas clearance so Christian can have his tree back, but he was really excited about the Jesse tree and didn't seem to mind giving up his tree for this.

Christian hangs the first ornament.


A friend suggested that we hang all the ornaments on the tree from the beginning, then just pull each ornament off during the devotional time. That way, you don't have a bare tree through most of the holiday season. What a great idea! (and I wouldn't have thought of that!!!)



There are a few different versions of books that go along with The Jesse Tree. If you're interested in doing this project, you can click here to see the book that we're using. I haven't looked at the other books, but this one is nice because it includes a children's version and an adult version of each story.

Of course, you could make all 25 ornaments yourself if you wanted to, but it was a fun project to do as a group.