Sounds of the Season: Family Worship during Advent and Beyond

It’s beginning to sound a lot like Christmas, isn’t it? When I was growing up, our Christmas albums stayed off until the day after Thanksgiving, and then we enjoyed them for a full month straight. Still, the season’s syrupy mix of secular and sacred songs filled radio waves in our car, home, and most public spaces through all of November and December. 

My own kids have a different experience with holiday music. We’re all self-selecting what we hear a lot more, aren’t we? With streaming services, smart speakers, and home delivery in place of physical shopping, the days of listening to “whatever is on the radio” seem mostly behind us. We may consider it a benefit to hear less of certain tunes, but the rich heritage of faithful hymns commemorating the birth of the Christ child is something we can still treasure with our families. When it comes to the sounds of the season in our own homes, Christmas carols offer us a beautiful way to teach our children about the truth of Christmas: that God coming to earth, in the flesh, for our sake, really does change everything about the world and our lives. 

I’ve lived in many places and belonged to churches with varying practices surrounding the “church calendar.” Even if your congregation, like mine, doesn’t make much of observing Advent for the four weeks leading up to Christmas, you might be thinking about doing something at home on your own. I don’t have the capacity for all the traditions I’d imagined sharing with my children. Many years, singing Christmas songs together is all I can manage! I’ve come to see that it isn’t a lesser option. Worshiping together during Advent is a strong, meaningful tradition that can help center our season on Jesus. 

An Invitation to Worship

Beyond Christmas, though, it might be worth stepping back and looking at the bigger picture of worship in our home through the year. What if Advent is an invitation to a new year of worship as a family? The excitement of seasonal music can be the perfect opportunity for a fresh start in our discipleship rhythms and a chance to enjoy God’s delightful gift of singing together for months and years to come. If we’re not already in the habit of singing in worship with our family, these beautiful and nostalgic carols can help us begin.  

Christmas music, for all its glory, is a small sliver of music through the ages. Every culture in history has had music of some sort, and it’s written all through Scripture as something for God’s people to experience and offer back to him in worship. The first explicit reference to music in the Bible is in the fourth chapter of Genesis![1] The Old Testament describes God’s people in song at every step along their way. One of the longest books of the Bible (Psalms) is entirely made up of songs. Jesus even cried out the lyrics to one of them from the cross![2] The New Testament also offers instruction about Christian worship as the church was established,[3] and it ends with Revelation’s descriptions of the cataclysmic choruses we’ll bring to the Lord in heaven. God gives his people music and receives worship in music back in Bible times, still today, and continuing in eternity. So, including worship music in our own home life is one way we can help our children understand and experience their place in God’s big story.  

Starting Small

This could look different for each of us. Maybe you’ve never done anything musical at home and barely even sing at church. Families have never before had the resources for singing and worship we can access today on our phones or speakers, so you don’t have to be a confident vocalist to bring music to life with your family! If you’ve identified some songs you want to learn, printing off the lyrics can help everyone study and memorize them faster. Try listening to different recordings or covers of the songs your children seem most drawn to, and see if you can find a favorite version. There are so many ways to bring these songs into your home this season, which you can adjust for your own children’s ages and maturity levels. 

Maybe you have squirrely kids who need a snack and a calming rendition of “Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus” playing on the way home from school. Little ones might love to learn “Away in a Manger” while cradling their own baby doll. Perhaps at bedtime, you can all learn a new verse of “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” each week leading up to Christmas. The enchanting tune of “What Child Is This?” might help your kids learn more about Jesus’s purpose of salvation with the clear message of the gospel in the second verse. Older children may appreciate understanding more about the Incarnation proclaimed in “O Come, All Ye Faithful.” “O Holy Night” could help point to Jesus as the source of true justice when talking about fairness or exclusion in your own community. Maybe you remember a special carol from your childhood, or a mentor or grandparent could share their favorite with your kids. If you have any budding musicians studying an instrument, perhaps their teachers could include one of these tunes in their lessons. Even repeating a collection of carols consistently in the background can offer glimpses of the gospel story for a tired or indifferent teenager. 

There are about as many ways to share these songs as there are songs to sing. And as we look to the new year, these are all practices we could continue past the holidays with other beloved hymns or worship songs. The momentum of Christmas music offers a chance to begin laying a foundation of family worship that can, God-willing, bear fruit for all of us far beyond December 25. Along with our children, we can sing, for Advent and the whole year through, what believers throughout history have cried: “Come, Lord Jesus!”[4]

[1] Genesis 4:21

[2] Mark 15:34; Psalm 22

[3] Ephesians 5:19; Colossians 3:16

[4] Revelation 22:20