I’m always looking for creative ways to engage our children with Scripture and church history. Since they love opening the doors on their Advent calendar each year (which we fill will candy and Bible verses about the coming Messiah), we decided to design our own calendars for each season of the year. Here are the steps to do the same.
First, purchase a blank, wooden Advent calendar (or make one if you’re really crafty!). We bought the one from the Woodpeckers store on Amazon for $50.
Second, use spray paint to paint your calendar in one of the colors of the Church Year (e.g., green for ordinary time—see our “Guide to Liturgical Colors“). We used Ironlak Acrylic Spray Paint (sold at craft stores like Michael’s or on their website) in the color “Huey” green.
Third, use gold paint to paint numbers on the doors and Christian symbols in empty spaces on the calendar. Since our calendar only had 24 doors, we painted two numbers on the first seven doors (e.g., 1/25 for the first and 25th day of the month). In the empty space at the top, we painted the Greek Christogram IC XC NIKA which means “Jesus Christ Conquers.” I printed out the Christogram on cardstock and cut it out with an X-Acto knife to create my own stencil, but it didn’t work very well. I plan to redo it at some point, either creating my own stencil with a thin plastic sheet or simply buying one (e.g., a 3″ stencil by Stencils by Joanie). I painted the numbers by hand but was using a brush that was too wide, so I also plan to redo those with a smaller brush or a 1/2″ stencil.
Fourth, if your calendar has an open space like ours, consider filling it with Christian artwork such as an icon from Uncut Mountain Supply (just make sure that it’s small enough to fit). We are planning to change out the icons every time that there is a feast day or saint day, so we are using more affordable laminated paper icons and storing them in a binder for annual use (e.g., see the icon of Justin Martyr below for his feast day on June 1). Most of these we will probably just print ourselves, but I was able to order a set of 24 prints from Eastern Christian Publications (size Medium, 6×9″).
Fifth, fill your doors with small pieces of candy (Frooties work great because they’re so small) and slips of paper with Bible verses or facts about the saints or feasts of the various days for the upcoming month (see our Calendar of the Church Year and scroll to the end for a list of select days, or see page 691 of the 2019 Book of Common Prayer). For example, June 14 is the feast day of Basil of Caesarea, so for the month of June we’ll put a slip of paper in door #14 that says “Basil of Caesarea (also called ‘Basil the Great’) helped formulate the church’s doctrine of the Holy Spirit and strongly defended the full deity of the Spirit,” and on that day we’ll put his icon the center.
