Classical and Christian Christmas Education

December 11, 2025 by

If you have been reading the Bradford Bulletin, you will have seen Mrs. Mitchell’s Christmas thoughts.  You will find the full text below.  Enjoy!

 

Classical and Christian Christmas

Ellen Mitchell

Bradford Academy is classical and Christ  -centered in order to glorify God

by educating children to love God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love their neighbor as themselves.

 

Classical and Christian…these words roll off our tongues on a daily basis here at Bradford Academy.  However, have you considered how the stages and tools of classical education provide a robust template for understanding and communicating the message of Christmas? More specifically, how can a classical approach communicate the Christian gospel message of the Advent season and of Jesus Christ’s incarnation? 

 

Teaching the Grammar of Christmas:

Consider the grammar stage of a child’s education.  In the grammar stage, where students focus on foundations and concrete knowledge, children learn the structure of the biblical text through songs and chants.  Through the repetitive study of history cards, they delve into true stories and gain “pegs” on which to hang scriptural truths that correspond to the people and events studied.  During this season of their education, the students also enjoy memorizing Christmas hymns which underscore and highlight the Biblical and historic events of the Advent.  This foundation of facts and familiarity is the starting point or the ground work needed to trace God’s hand of redemption throughout the biblical narrative. 

What can we do at home to capitalize on this foundation?  We could build in small pockets of family time to enjoy the Advent prophecies, Christmas hymns, and gospel stories of Jesus’ birth during the month of December which will solidify the foundation and make deposits towards future discipleship.

The Dialectic or Logic Stage:  

A quick Google search gives a reasonable definition of this stage of learning:  “Dialectic is a method of argument, discussion, or reasoning that involves examining opposing ideas to find a higher truth.”  These skills can begin in the late grammar stage and blossom in the “tween” years.  At this stage of development, children delight in figuring things out and questioning.  They generally abandon belief in fairy tales and start looking for connects in reality.  Young people may even begin asking probing questions about their faith and how they can know that the scriptures are reliable.  An important training tool at this stage is to teach and learn how to ask questions well and respectfully.  Parents can appreciate that questioning beliefs is not necessarily defiance, but could be the process needed to examine a truth more deeply in order to make it one’s own. 

What can we do at home to capitalize on this stage of growth?  Build in family time that moves beyond story telling to asking questions of the text that lead to further exploration together.  Build a library of reliable resources, reliable voices online, and ask your pastor for recommendations.

The Rhetoric of Christmas:

The Webster’s 1828 Dictionary defines rhetoric as “the art of speaking with propriety, elegance and force”.   By high school, students at classical and Christian schools have many opportunities to put well constructed thoughts into papers and presentations.  Those thoughts have progressed from mere foundational knowledge (in the Grammar stage) to growth in understanding (during the Logic stage).  Finally, our students mature into the rhetoric stage where we learn that ideas and information need wisdom and response.  Rhetoric involves articulating the answer to the question, “So what?”  If your high school student is not contemplating the meaning of Christmas, the Advent season, and the Incarnation of Jesus, we ought to do everything we can to provoke that meditation.

What can we do at home to capitalize on this stage of maturity?  Rhetoric students could prepare the Advent devotionals for the family or youth group, deciding on the pertinent scriptures and historical events that lead up to and communicate the beauty and mystery of the incarnation.  One might even try to write a children’s version to capture big ideas in a simple way.  At this level of maturity, parents can present counter worldviews or ask questions like, “How would you explain the incarnation to an unbeliever?” or “How would you answer a challenge to Jesus’s claim in John 14:6, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me…’?” We can talk about the traditions connected to Christmas and discuss how traditions develop and help us remember deeper ideas.

 

We hope you and your family enjoy this special season and grow together in knowledge, understanding, and wisdom!