I love Christmas time and always have since I was a little girl. The sights, smells and sound of Christmas Carols bring back so many wonderful memories for me. But a few years ago I found myself so stressed and rushed around Christmas. I started to almost wish I could just "jump" over to January. I realized that year that I was trying to do too much, you know, "for the kids." I was stressing way too much about shopping and saying "yes" to every party and Christmas event. You know, the holiday traditions mean nothing and are not enjoyable if Mom is all frazzled! So I decided that quality is better than quantity when it comes to holiday traditions (a quote I got from Barbara Curtis)and really the children remember more about the atmosphere of the home at Christmas time than anything else.
Here are the traditions we do just about every year and now I have older children to help!
We get our live Christmas tree every year on the Friday after Thanksgiving. We go to the same farm near our house. We have to go at night, no matter how cold it is, so the kids can play tag through all the Christmas trees. We usually don't get it all decorated that night, but at least set it up and put some lights on it. Then I always make homemade hot chocolate.
My older kids put up lights on the front of our house. This year we added at blow-up Nativity that we bought from Lowes. I love it! We're making a statement about what Christmas is really about.
I've really chilled out about the front of the house being perfect. I'm just glad that my kids have taken over this task.
The children love hanging up the stockings. Our mantle is really getting full!
Every year we make our Louisiana Candy House. I did a post on how we do this last year. Look under the Christmas tag on my side bar.
A few other traditions:
We make lots of Christmas cookies and candy, including Norwegian ones from my husband's childhood.
We have the children draw each other's names for gift giving. So they buy a special gift for the sibling that they choose (of course I help the little ones with this.)
We go to our church's Christmas Eve service every year after eating Chinese food beforehand.
We have the large turkey dinner on Christmas day after all the presents are done.
I usually take the kids, or sometimes just the girls, to one Christmas play or ballet during the season.
So, what are some of y'all's unique Christmas traditions?
We are a family with two children. They are both adopted from Guatemala. I am working to incorporate some Guatemalan traditions with ours. That means that we like to have a bonfire, and tamales are part of the Christmas meal. We will spend a couple nights each season letting the kids get into their pajamas then snuggle under blankets in the car as we drive around to look at lights. We always bake cookies on Christmas eve.
ReplyDeleteYour house is beautiful, and I love your live tree! We always get a live one, too (I can't bear to break the tradition I've had since I was little), but never set it up inside until sometime in mid-December... Do you have issues with it getting too dry by Christmas? If not, we'll put ours up earlier next year!
ReplyDeleteLove that Nativity!
We do lots of celebrating! Christmas Eve is spent with my Dad's Family and Christmas Day (in the afternoon) is spent with my Mom's! It's lots of love and food. We also go to the Christmas eve service. It's my favorite service of the year. The candle light and the Christmas carols... I love it!
ReplyDelete