Last weekend I went to three of the five Christmas events I was invited to attend. I wanted to go to all five of them, but logistically, it wasn’t possible. If it was, I probably would have gone to them all, which tells you how crazy I am…

One of the parties I attended was a cookie swap for the moms in my homeschool group. I really wanted to spend some time with these ladies away from school. Between keeping an eye on your kids and getting the school day done, there often isn’t much time to talk and connect. Besides, sometimes I can’t be at our Monday classes because of work. Also, I like cookies. So I drove out to the party in the cold and rain to meet up with the other moms.

It was fun! We ate appetizers, swapped Christmas ornaments, and played games. I had to leave before it was over to meet my husband to go to another party, but before I left we went around the group sharing our Christmas traditions. It was interesting to hear how other families open a present each on Christmas eve, make cookies together, go to candlelight service, or start decorating for Christmas in November.

 

Cookies from the swap!

 

It started me thinking about the Christmas traditions in our family. Sure, we open presents on Christmas day and eat a big dinner, but what else do we do? With our family of six and most of our family in states far from Georgia, we don’t often travel for the holidays. I feel like I’m at a time in my life where instead of participating in the traditions of our extended family like we did as kids (dinner at Grandma’s house, helping cook dinner, piling up for sleepovers in the guest room with the cousins), I’m developing my own traditions with our nuclear family.

But I don’t always like it. There was something about having the aunts and cousins and grandma all participating in the holidays which made it special. And I still want special – and I certainly want it for the kids! So I find myself torn between overdoing activities and trying to simplify to make what we do meaningful. We don’t have an automatic Christmas plan anymore.

 

But we do have traditions! It took some time and thought, but I realized that without knowing it, we have started to form our own traditions. When the kids were very young, we started taking a family Christmas picture to send to our family. Perry then creates a calendar with pictures of all of us from the past year as an update for our family that doesn’t see us often. So now, we gift a calendar and framed picture to our family every year.

 

Calendar 2018 : The 2019 calendar is coming up!

 

Some years ago, I figured out that many people put up Christmas trees as soon as Thanksgiving is over (I know some do it before, but I’m not doing that – one holiday at a time!). So we’ve been going out the day after Thanksgiving and choosing our Christmas tree together. We’d spend the weekend playing Christmas music and decorating the tree and the house. It started because I decided that if we were going to spend all that money on a tree, we might as well enjoy it as long as possible. This year, I bought an pre-lit artificial tree (gasp!), so we didn’t go to the tree lot. But we did decorate, and even though we don’t have a sweet fir smelling tree, we do have a beautifully decorating tree with evenly spaced lights. I always like warm white Christmas lights, but the kids prefer multicolored (as I did when I was little), but with the new tree we can compromise. They have the tree lit with the colors for them during the day, and in the evening it’s all starry white for me. (I’m diffusing my essential oils for the Christmas smell…)

 

Colored lighting for the kiddos…

 

One tradition I’m changing is wrapping all the gifts on Christmas eve after the kids go to bed. There’s already too much to do, so I’m chipping away at the wrapping early. I plan to watch a Christmas movie after the kids go to sleep this year!

My parents fly in from Boston for Christmas almost every year. They love Pappadeaux (a creole restaurant) and most of the time stop there on the the way to our house from the airport. We’ve met them a couple of times and the kids love it! This year, the kids reminded me that we didn’t get to go the last time their Mana and Papa John came and asked if we could do it again. So it sounds like that may be a tradition we make happen this year!

My mom and I usually make Christmas dinner together for the family. She’s an amazing cook, so I do my part and mostly get out of the way. But it’s a lot, so I’m toying with the idea of ordering some (or all) of the meal from Whole Foods. My partners at work think I’m nuts for doing all that cooking, which is how I discovered the idea of ordering a holiday meal in the first place. It just hadn’t occurred to me! But my husband mentioned to me the other day that he was really looking forward to the scratch lemon meringue pie my mom makes for him every year, so I’m pretty sure we’ll be doing some cooking. Of course, the kids want their homemade mac and cheese, and we have to make cookies for Santa, so we’ll be giving the kitchen a workout in any case!

 

Some early holiday table decor…

 

The kids have been participating in our church Christmas show for the past few years. This year, Ana is dancing, Aria is singing a solo, and Perry and Anora are in it too. I’m singing with the adult chorus, so I get to see things up close! They’ve been rehearsing for weeks and everyone is very excited for Sunday…

 

There are some things that I’d like to have as Christmas traditions but haven’t stuck yet. We have donated toys and clothes to folks who needed them in past years. I’d like us to have a service we do every year (and not just at Christmas!), but I don’t have one. We used to go see the Nutcracker every year, but it’s really pricey and a lot of hustle to get into the city for the show. Maybe next year. I also have a beautiful picture book with daily readings that is designed to be read every day of December leading up to Christmas, but we can’t seem to keep that on track. We always talk to the kids about Jesus and what Christmas is really about, and I limit the gifts I buy. I don’t want the commercialism of the season to overtake remembering the gift we have in Jesus.  I would like to have a tradition that reminds us of this, but I haven’t made one that we sustain – yet. I’m still looking!

 

That’s the beauty of traditions: They remind us, they keep us grounded, and we can add new ones that have meaning for us. We also can eliminate ones that don’t serve us any longer. Sometimes we keep traditions that wear us out or keep us busy just because we’ve always done them. But if we will have traditions that are meaningful, we must be thoughtful and selective. I used to feel sad that we couldn’t keep the extended family traditions we used to have. But now, I have the opportunity to choose the traditions our family keeps, and let go of the ones that just take up time and energy. And so we create our Christmas!

 

 

What Christmas traditions do you keep? Any that you’ve let go? Do you have any special reminders of Jesus or service that you do at this time of year? I could use some ideas…Please share in the comments below!