Family Christmas Online™ was formed to help your family to have a joyful and meaningful Christmas, even if your life is going in thirty different directions.

Welcome to our growing library of stories, ideas, and songs to enrich (and in some cases simplify) your Christmas season. Each year we have added or improved resources, so keep checking back. This year we already have a number of upgrades in the works, but it's too early to make a formal announcement.

Also, please don't let the Victorian look fool you - we like old-fashioned Christmases, but we live and work in the twenty-first century. Most of the tips we pass on are things that we or our closest friends and family members have learned first-hand. If you have a tip you'd like to share with your fellow readers, please let us know.

Here are some areas we hope you find interesting, helpful, and encouraging, in or out of season.

• The Bible Story of Christmas - The most important Bible passages about Christmas, with illustrations
• Other Stories of Christmas - Christmas stories from diverse sources, including Charles Dickens and O. Henry, as well as original stories by our own editors and authors. Includes new stories for 2010!
• Christmas Poems - This page contains links to uplifting or humorous family-friendly Christmas poems. Many are classic poems by well-known authors.
• Christmas Memories - This page represents the beginning of a new collection of special Christmas memories, from our family and from readers. Your special Christmas memories are welcome as well.
• Christmas Musings - This department contains articles that answer common questions about Christmas and Christmas traditions, as well as articles about topics that don't fit anywhere else on the site. Here are a few examples:
  • The Line for the Family Stable Starts Here - A funny and touching look at the way children perceive Nativity sets in their homes.
  • A Brief History of Christmas - How did a midwinter feast become the most celebrated Christian holiday?
  • Why Do We Celebrate?/Why Celebrate Christmas - Early Christians didn't celebrate the birth of Jesus in any way. Have we taken a wrong turn, or is celebration a fundamental part of our human condition?
  • Could Christmas Possibly Come at a Worse Time? - A different way of looking at holiday stresses
  • What do Trains Have to Do With Christmas? - We examine a century-old tradition that has made many family Christmas celebrations richer.
  • How Much is My Collectible Worth? - Are you hanging onto things you don't really want because you think they might be worth something? Or are you just curious about the cash value of some heirloom you wouldn't dream of selling anyway? Either way, this article gives you some things to think about. New for 2011!
• Christmas Craft Resources - Original resources to help you plan and complete Christmas craft and gift ideas. Features include:
  • Craft Wrapping Paper - Free vintage-looking, color-coordinated printable wrapping paper patterns you can use for crafts (or even for wrapping small presents). Note: Many of these patterns can be used year-'round.
• About Christmas Decorations - A discussion of when, how, and why Christmas decorations have been used; including articles that should give you ideas for decorating your home. Features include:
  • Bag some Fine Art This Christmas - Some of America's most popular living artists have licensed merchandise that you can buy and frame for a few dollars if you shop carefully in the gift bag department of Dollar Tree or other discount stores. Well known Western, wildlife, landscape, and devotional artists have all contributed. New for 2010!
  • Traditional Home-Made Ornaments
  • Don't Try This at Home (Anymore) - Dangerous Decorations People Used to Use
  • Traditional Outdoor Decorations - Articles about historical outdoor decorations, including:
    • Folk Art Outside Santa Displays
    • Popular Mechanics™ Christmas 'Project-a-Plans'
  • A Brief History of Christmas Villages If you enjoy setting out a holiday village of any kind, we think you will enjoy learning about the deep roots of this multicultural tradition.
• About Christmas Trees - Describes the history and other aspects of Christmas trees
• About Nativities - addresses the history and variety of nativity displays.
• Family Christmas Music - A small but growing collection of traditional Christmas music from various countries, with descriptions of regional practices and of the songs' histories. Many of the songs include mp3 arrangements for listening to an instrumental verse and chorus.
• Christmas Recipes - A resource for folks who need to prepare a holiday dish in a hurry, or for folks who want to make some item that Mom or Grandma used to make, but you don't remember how - mostly still in the planning stage. New for 2011, a great summertime combination:
  • Our Marinated Chicken recipe, perfect for grilled chicken and any kind of shish-kabob.
  • Our Easy Rice Pilalf Recipe - a rice dish you can prepare in the microwave.
• Christmas Movies - This page is the beginning of a collection of Christmas movie reviews, focusing on movies worth watching with your family. Your suggestions are welcome as well.
• Christmas Activity Ideas - Family-friendly activities you can do during the Christmas season, including day and overnight trips.
• Thanksgiving, Then, and Then, and Now - Harvest feasts go back to the ancient days - including three ancient Jewish festivals that celebrated harvests, with surprising parallels to our celebration of Thanksgiving.

Special Announcement for 2011: In our research on various Christmas subjects, we keep running into great people who collect or build replicas of those cardboard Christmas houses that most North American families set out and "putzed" around with every Christmas season between 1928 and 1965. There are several great web resources, too, but much of the information is hard for beginning collectors to find. So we have put together CardboardChristmas.com™, a careful cross-reference of the most useful and reliable web resources about cardboard Christmas houses. We have also added a forum for asking and answering questions, and collecting information about these houses. If you have any interest in learning more about these little houses, please click here.

Also visit OldChristmasTreeLights.com, the Internet's largest guide to collecting Christmas tree lighting. Additional features include:

• Everything you ever wanted to know about bubble lights,
• Free MP3s of century-old wax cylinder Christmas song recordings - For some truly vintage Christmas cheer. It's amazing how well most of these recordings hold up to the test of time.

Best Wishes!

As always, our hope is that the resources we have so far can continue helping you and your family (as Dickens said of Scrooge):

Honor Christmas in your heart, and
"try to keep it all the year."

In the meantime, please keep in touch, and let us know what you'd like to see added or changed.

May God grant you joy and wonder every season of this year,

Paul and Shelia Race