Christmas and Family Traditions
Christmas time is my favorite time of the year - I’m sure that I share that in common with a lot of people. But I love the traditions in families and with our young family, my husband and I have enjoyed coming up with our own traditions. We’ve started some already and have thoughts for many more but right now I have 2 children that are under the age of 4 so some of my current traditions are limited by age. Nonetheless, they are fun and we are enjoying them. Of course, we put up a Christmas tree and stockings, our nativity scene. But, I have a special box that I keep for each child that holds only ornaments for that child. Whenever we travel somewhere, I try to find a unique ornament that is a reminder of where they have been and I place it with a note (from Mom) in their box. You see, I want them to have their own large assortment of meaningful ornaments from their childhoods when they leave home. I have no intention of telling them about their boxes until they are ready to leave home (for those of you who know me IRL - please don’t let out my secret). It’s kind of a special collection that I will give to them much later. I don’t limit myself to just 1 ornament - I just find very special and unique ornaments.
We’ve started our own tradition of having Texas BBQ Brisket on Christmas Eve just before our Children’s Church Service at 5:00PM. Following Church, our neighborhood has a tradition of lining all of the streets in the neighborhood with luminaries at dusk - it’s absolutely beautiful and last year was the first change we had to enjoy it and it was beautiful. I think this year we will get some hot chocolate and walk around (or drive depending on how cold it is). I plan to read the children the story of the birth of Jesus just before bedtime and then Santa and Mrs. Claus will enjoy putting out a few items for each child and then retire to a nice warm fire.
One thing we will definitely do when the children get older is to adopt a family at Christmas time - we haven’t completely formulated our ideas of how it will work but essentially we want our children to learn true giving of themselves. We may even take a year where we don’t spend any money on each other and only provide for a family - I’m not sure what age the children will need to be to understand all of that but we are definitely a few years off.
We really like traditions at our house - we revel in them and we know that it’s these types of traditions that will make lasting memories for our whole family. What traditions do you have in your home?