Tradition is weird. It makes you do things before you even realize that you don't know why you do them. By the way, the title is supposed to be read with a loud, Russian accent, as in Fiddler on the Roof. Anyway...
As this last Christmas season approached, I'd been doing a lot of thinking about how I would like Christmas to look for our family. I hadn't really put much weight into it before kids, but lately these things have become much more important to me, as a mother. I knew that I didn't want Christmas trees, presents, Santa nor his reindeer to overshadow the birth of Jesus and while pondering that, the voice of Bing Crosby came to me as he sang, "Santa knows that we're all God's children, That makes everything right..." over my iphone's Pandora radio app. Colby and I decided that it was ok for our kids to grow up enjoying all those things, but we agreed we had to be deliberate with our focus and priorities.
We envision having a large family and one of the things that we find most attractive about that is having family traditions to reunite for or pass down after the kids are grown. My goal is to be more intentional with how we spend our time, especially during this season, and not get caught up in the things we (I) feel obligated to do, but don't make that list. For example, you probably didn't notice that you hadn't gotten a family newsletter from us, right? :)
Here are some of the Christmas-time traditions we have (or would like to*) start:
- Make Christmas Pancakes with Cookie Cutters*
- Bake a Birthday Cake for Jesus, and of course sing (Reid will jump on any opportunity to sing "Happy Birthday", making this one even more fitting)*
- Make a "Thankful Garland" by Writing What We're Thankful for and Making a Paper Chain out of it*
- Creating our own Wrapping Paper
- Staying up Late for a Classic Christmas Movie*
- Taking a Drive to See Christmas Lights
- Letting the Kids Shop for a Toy to Donate to a Child in Need
- Bake Treats for Neighbors*
- Making Presents more Meaningful
- Dinner by Candlelight*
- Visit the local Drive-thru Nativity Scene*
- Visit Del Osso Farm's "Holiday on the Farm"*
- Let the Kids Choose a Donation from the World Vision Gift Catalog
While there were a lot of things that we didn't get to (we came up with our list half-way through December), there were some I knew I wanted to start right away, especially with Reid entering into Me-First-and-the-Gimme-Gimme mode.
With his many grandparents asking him what he wanted for Christmas, we've been hearing a lot of "I want..., I want..." out of him, so when I took him to Toys R Us to pick out a couple toys for "kids who don't have many like he does" I wasn't sure how he would take it. He was completely on board, picking out a couple Shake-n-Go cars, until it was time to drop them off. He did hand them over willingly though, after another quick discussion of why we were doing that. I was pretty proud of him.
The other new tradition I didn't want to postpone for the same reason of giving Reid a glimpse of how much we have to be grateful for and also just for the sake of giving was the World Vision Gift Catalog shopping. I explained to Reid in preschooler terms that our family was going to buy a farm animal for a poor family in another part of the world to help produce food for them. After he seemed to understand, I gave him the catalog and told him that he could choose the animal. After perusing the catalog for a few minutes, he turned back to the page with the $500 dairy cow and said, "I want to buy the cow for Ronin!!" After further explanation (and some negotiating), we settled on a goat and a general donation.
We're also keeping the santa photo tradition because I still love looking back on the annual santa photos my grandma has kept of my brother, cousins and me from birth, through the awkward years.
Most of us stopped getting in line to see Santa at a more appropriate age, however my brother (at 23) managed to convince the man in red to sit on his lap:
Reid and Ronin's Santa Pics to date:
This was also our second year hosting Christmas for our family, which meant a lot of decorating, cooking and a mountain of presents. We had our usual enchilada & tamale dinner, followed by presents on Christmas Eve, but exercised our hosting authority to change our traditional Christmas Day turkey dinner to the most amazing brunch... Ever.
The Decorations (with a retro spin, of course):
The Food:
As usual, I had to take a pictures of the things I cooked or baked that I didn't manage to totally screw up. No, I'm not being modest. Ask my husband or mom-in-law. Here are some of the prettier things I made:
Peppermint Mocha Cookies, Chocolate Toffee Trifle, the Veggie Tree Colby wouldn't stop making fun of, and a Caramel-Glazed Apple Cake
Ronin proving that baby's prefer the box over the toy that came inside of it:
My Attempt at Capturing a Serene Christmas Morning Picture of My Boys:
Thanks for making it to the end of this obnoxiously long post! I'd love to hear from you on what your favorite childhood Christmas traditions were or any new ones that you and your family have started!
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