How many Christ-centered Christmas carols do you and your kids know? How many verses to them? Do you and your children truly understand them? This Christmas, I want to instill a better knowledge of  Christmas carols in our family - an activity that furthers our desire to focus on Jesus during the holiday season. Thankfully, accomplishing this is ridiculously easy. Here's how we're doing it:

1. Pick some Christmas carols. Choose them out of your head, or do an Internet search for a list of favorite carols to come up with ideas on what tunes you want to learn more about. Be sure you're picking carols (hymns, or spiritual folk songs) or songs focusing on Christ, not just popular Christmas songs that have nothing to do with the true meaning of Christmas.

2. Do an Internet search for lyrics - the more verses you can find for each song, the better. There are tons of websites designed just for song lyrics. Any one of them will probably work; here's one that has a nice list of Christmas carols.

3. Do another internet search looking for the story behind the song. This is optional, but a really interesting addition to this project. We are actually using some books - Ace Collins' Stories Behind the Best-Loved Songs of Christmas and More Stories Behind the Best-Loved Songs of Christmas. Another wonderful resource is Christmas Hymns for a Kids' Heart, which includes a beautifully illustrated book with stories behind Christmas carols, lyrics and vocal lines for the songs, and a CD of the songs. If you want Internet sources, one I can recommend is "30 Favorite Christmas Carols - their Origins and History."



4. Now pick one Christmas song, read the story of its origins to your kids, and read through all the lyrics. Sing the Christmas song at least once a day until everyone knows it well. It's up to you how many verses you memorize. For younger kids, I recommend memorizing one verse, but reading them all the verses and discussing what the words mean.

5. As soon as you know one song well, move on to another!