I'd forgotton this one--it comes from a great little Christmas story called The Light at Tern Rock. In there, the grandma insists that she and her grandson clean the place from top to bottom in preparation for the Christ child coming. She does this every year on Christmas Eve Day.

So we decided to try it last year. I roped my four kids, nine and under, into cleaning the whole house with me on Christmas Eve Day. Of course they all complained a lot, but we got to work anyway. By the afternoon, the house was clean and beautiful. We had all worked together. And my six-year-old boy said, "That was fun!"