It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas
What I love about December and Christmas is that that feeling is carried on. I love the Christmas lights, I love the happiness that the general public has. I love how happy decorating for and celebrating Christmas makes me (I bought solar lights for some tomato cages and can't stop looking at how pretty they are outside). The Little in my life is now starting to become old enough to appreciate the tree, the presents, the nativity sets, etc. Which brings me to the real point of this post: Christmas traditions.
Traditiooooon! Tradition!
Tradition motivates most of my holiday activities. My parents don't have any more children living in their home. So, that's kind of switched up the Christmas traditions that we particiapte in. That being said, I've got five main traditions in my family that I love. 1. The Christmas tree doesn't go up before Thanksgiving. Okay, I'll admit that in my own home I did break this rule. I'm in the middle of a pretty rigorous training program for work that is taking up a lot of time and I knew that I wouldn't really have time to do a lot of decorating after Thanksgiving, so I put |
2. We do stockings. My parents have always done stockings and presents for us - which is pretty traditional. Every Christmas my little sister would get up earlier than everyone else and go through the stockings comparing presents. Apparently, she still does this. This year, I've taken this tradition that my parents started with us and I'm expanding it. Friends, there are stockings galore at my house, with personalized and small gifts inside. No large presents. If it doesn't fit into that decorative hosiery, you don't get it as a present.
3. My mom has used the same Advent calendar since we were kids. It's definitely seen better days, and is a little worse for wear. But, I adore the Advent calendar she has. Every evening we would open a new door and see what was inside (candy, a mouse, a cross, etc.). I think that it was the most exciting part of our day. The Little got an Advent calendar this year that her mother picked out - a really pretty wooden house. Want to know my plan? Of course you do. I want to make my own Advent calendar based on THIS Advent calendar. I'm going to take a high quality picture (or several, really), and print them out on paper. Then, |
4. The ornaments that we use are all sentemental. Years ago my mother started a tradition of getting us specific ornaments that represent something big that happened to us durign the year. One year I painted a Christmas card with a quail for the Christmas light tour we have in town, and that year my mom got me a quail ornament. I love that this is a tradition we have in my family. It certainly makes our Christmas tree's interesting and not very Pinteresty, but more than anything when we look at our ornaments we are also reminded of the events that inspired the ornament (and that's better than any themed tree). Christmas was also my maternal grandmother's favorite holiday and she would often get us our own special ornaments. She would write our initials on the bottom of them. They are such a treasure to me now.
5. I've done blog posts before on recipies and their connection to family history. This is certainly true around the holidays in my family. I know that every year the Christmas meal with feature: Nellie's Jello Salad, Green Bean Casserole, Nonna's Cornbread Dressing, and Nonna's Pecan Pie. I love that these family traditions are present every year - yum!
Your Traditions
What are some traditions in your family? What do you look forward to every holiday season? Maybe your family tradition is watching Christmas movies.I really enjoy watching those too! Sometimes I'll watch them with my parents. Most of the time, I'll watch them at my house, cuddled up with the dogs and some hot chocolate. My personal top 5 favorite Christmas movies (and I try to watch them every year): 1. The Muppet Christmas Carol 2. How the Grinch Stole Christmas (original) 3. Elf 4. The Santa |
Anyway, Merry Christmas y'all. I probably won't post again before the beginning of the year, but I wanted to write a quick post. I hope that you'll think about your own Christmas traditions and why you do them. Better yet, I hope you write them down so that your descendants know what was important to you around the holidays.