What Are Your Christmas Traditions?
I have been thinking about holiday traditions the past few days. Mostly, I have been feeling anxious about whether or not my family has any. My kids are now to an age where traditions seem to be part of their development because they understand more about what is going on around them and they want to participate. When I mentioned it to my husband this evening, he was perplexed as to why I felt like we don’t have any. We put up a tree, do an advent calendar, read the Christmas story from the Bible on Christmas morning, open presents….. It was then I was able to clarify that I feel like we are missing something UNIQUE to our little family unit. What is something that we do over the holidays that incorporates fun and sentiment all in one scoop?
This year I thought we’d make some roll out sugar cookies together and that maybe THAT could be our special thing. Except when it came down to it, I felt more like Monica Gellar from Friends wanting to shout at the children, “Wait! You don’t know the system!” And part of me wanted the cookies to look pretty and professional. The kids had fun dumping out piles of sprinkles over the freshly iced cookies and licking their fingers every few seconds. So much for pretty symmetrically decorated cookies. At dinner when we were debriefing the whole experience my oldest shared, “Mommy didn’t let us touch anything.” That isn’t true–I did let them use the cookie cutters but I had to tell them to wait several times–my rationalization is that it was my first time making rolled sugar cookies and I was figuring it out for myself first before I let them help me very much. All I could see was warped cookies not being picked up carefully and so much sprinkles around me I thought I was at the beach. In the moment I was thinking that maybe this isn’t what one of our traditions should be. I have to learn to have more fun and not care if the whole house gets trashed with cookie sprinkles while the baby swipes freshly cut out cookie dough from the cookie sheets.
One thing we have done and are planning on doing again is to gather some other friends and go Christmas caroling in our neighborhood. We did that 2 years ago and it really made an impression on our oldest son. He has asked if we are going this year again. We are having people meet us at our house after an early dinner and then we will go out for an hour to sing to the neighbors. We’ll come back to our house for some hot chocolate and desserts to warm up again.
Maybe we don’t need any more traditions than what we do have. Maybe I’m putting too much stock in the need to be unique. Maybe my kids will remember making cookies and going Christmas caroling with fondness and feel all kinds of nostalgia when they think back on their childhood. I hope so.
But, I am wondering, what do you do for your special Christmas or holiday traditions? When did you start doing them? Were your traditions passed on from when you were a kid?
I love the comment about the cookies!! I could picture our family as you describe your experience.
We are doing caroling this year with our church. It should be fun. But who knows with 3 little ones it may be more stress. I always wanted to take my children to a soup kitchen and help out but haven’t done it yet.
When we were in San Antonio we always drove around and looked at Christmas lights and went down to the Riverwalk to see the lights down their. Now we live on a military base and probably will just drive around here but it won’t be the same.
One tradition that I was hoping to do was to have Christmas on Christmas Eve with Daniel’s parents, do our Christmas in the morning of Christmas Day and then drive 4 hours to my parents in Houston and do Christmas there in the afternoon. I think this is what we have been doing the last three years, until this year. I just don’t want to drive four hours on Christmas Day, so we are going the day after. As I was writing this comment I realized that i want this because as kids we did our Christmas at home and then drove 30 minutes to Nana’s house. But a 4 hour drive is certainly different!
One of the cool things we did growing up (when we lived in Hawaii) was make a Christmas video for my grandparents, since they were all the way on the mainland. We would sing Christmas carols, Hawaiian style, I would do a hula I learned at school (no joke), and we’d read the Christmas story. It was fun, but it’s rather embarrassing to watch now! However, it helps me remember how kids act and understand my own children better, in a strange way. I see so much of my son in myself (and also my brother) as kids.
If we manage to get a Christmas tree up and lights all around, I will consider this year a success. When we were in SA, we would ALWAYS go to the midnight Christmas Eve service at our church. It’s so… ethereal and beautiful in a mysterious way. No such luck here!