Best of Blessings: Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

For 10 years, the National Children’s Unit of the Anglican Church of
Canada published a semi-annual worship resource called Blessings, which
was designed to help Christian educators plan and implement church
school lessons that would stimulate young children’s imaginations and
encourage their learning of essential scripture. The first Best of
Blessings book focused on Lent, Holy Week, and Easter. This second
volume covers Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany. Like the first book, it
consists of reprints of the best of Blessings worship materials.

Each Blessings is designed around a worship program that has been
developed in a working parish in Canada. Ginny Arthur, editor of the
Blessings series and this book, notes that every parish has its own
personality. “No Parish is quite like another,” she writes “and
units should be adapted to fit each particular place and situation.”
With diversity in mind, a variety of activities are suggested for each
calendar event; some are aimed at very young children, others at older
children, and still others can involve children, adults, and even
seniors.

Best of Blessings offers a complete package. First, theological and
historical information is provided so that participants will know why
they are celebrating Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany. Then readers are
led through a step-by-step planning process to make the best use of
basic resources at hand. Next, imaginative suggestions are offered on
how young children can learn to identify with biblical people and
events.

Christian educators faced with staging “yet another” Christmas
pageant, or ministers stymied for ideas on how to bring the Holy Land
into the holidays, will welcome this book.