Check out my first post on Advent Conspiracy HERE.

Like I said yesterday, this whole idea resonates deep within me. I described it to people like this:

If you look at the way most Christians “do” Christmas, it doesn’t look any different than the rest of society. Sure we go to church on Christmas Eve, but the majority of people do. We still spend just as much, eat just as much, and shop just as much. If you really think about it with honesty…Christians don’t do Christmas any different than non-Christians. They just don’t.

That is the heart behind this.

Here is the very, very best video I have seen on this. It was made by the founder of Advent Conspiracy, Rick McKinley. It is worth the 3 minutes, I promise you (video embedded RSS readers)

I thought I would share what Rose and I are doing differently this year for Advent Conspiracy.

I don’t share this because I want to look good or look better than anyone. Honestly…my first thought about this was “hey we can save some money this Christmas.” But God has taken that attitude and changed it, knowing he can use my pitiful offering and do something glorious with it is a beautiful thing.

• Rose and I are going to make TONS of some sort of Christmas cookie or dessert. We will be giving those to people we would normally buy something for, outside of our immediate family. We figure we would normally spend about $10 per gift, and we can make the dessert for at most $5 per batch. The money we save will go towards our church’s goal of building clean water wells in Uganda.
• Rose and I are not going to buy any Starbucks. We aren’t huge Starbucks people anyway, but we probably spend $25 a month there only because it is the closest coffee shop to our apartment. The money we save goes towards building clean water wells too.
• Rose and I are going to give our presence and travel to Alaska on New Year’s Eve to be with her parents over the holidays for the first time in 2 years. It will also be the first time (outside of fishing) that we’ve had some quality time with them since before we were married. To be able to do this, Rose and I won’t be buying any material gifts for each other for Christmas or our anniversary. We thought giving our presence to each other and to family was better than giving presents.

In all actuality, we are spending more money this Christmas than we normally would. Flying isn’t cheap these days. We are so thankful to both have jobs, or we wouldn’t be able to go to Alaska.

So I’m curious about what you are thinking of doing for Advent Conspiracy?