With the holidays come and gone and with my children in the beginning stages of being able to remember our holiday traditions, I start to wonder "Am I doing enough to make the holiday special for them? Do they understand that it's about more than just presents? Will it matter to them that we make a gingerbread house every year? Will they remember me making homemade cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning? Will they love Christmas music as much as I did as a child (and still do)?"
I have very fond memories of Christmas as a child. We always celebrated Christmas Eve at my mom's family and received a few presents there. My grandmother made her homemade fudge and we had lots of appetizers. It was always a comfortable place where I felt safe & loved. We would come home and open one gift and then go to bed and wait for Santa Claus to come and fill our stockings and put out the rest of our presents.
On Christmas Day we would wake up and open presents and stockings (stocking presents were my favorite) and have a laid-back day until my dad came to get me and my brother around noon. We'd then go to his house and open presents with he & my stepmom.
I'm a tradition-oriented person. I like traditions and want to create some for my own family. We decided after we had Ben that we were going to be home for Christmas Day so that our children could wake up in their own house and enjoy Christmas morning here since our families are all 4-6 hours away. There are some years that I regret that decision because I miss the Christmas Eve celebration with my family. This year, happily, we were able to have Christmas Eve dinner with friends from Chicago who happened to stay this year to the birth of their baby a few weeks before. We were able to have a large festive with them and some of their family who were in town. But many years it is just our family for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day (we then leave to see family afterwards).
Some holiday traditions that we have:
-listening to Christmas music pretty much non-stop between Thanksgiving and Christmas
-making a gingerbread house
-making & decorating Christmas cookies
-advent calendar
-advent devotional (need to be better about this with the kids)
-homemade cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning
-picking out "birthday presents for Jesus" in the World Vision catalog
It's a truism that we don't see the fruit of much of our labor until our children are older. I don't know if I'll see whether or not I was successful with imparting the special nature of the season to my kids until they are grown and start implementing traditions of their own.
1 comment:
I love that you pick out a birthday present for Jesus! That's a fantastic idea. This year was actually a much easier December than usual (I think it was b/c we don't have all the friends and connections here yet). We didn't have a lot of parties or activities to take up the time. Instead, we did an Advent calendar, and I was really deliberate about doing an Advent activity with the kids each day. We traditionally do an Advent wreath, and bake a cake for Jesus on Christmas. We haven't been in our own home for Christmas yet, but may start that next year.
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