One of the things I love about the blog world is how you can use it to connect to a lot of people all at once. I read quite a few blogs every day, and most of them are by people I don't even know! I just enjoy reading what they have to share, getting inspiration from their photos, getting ideas for many different things. Some of these blogs are read by thousands of people and their posts get comments by the hundreds! Reading through the comments can even be fun depending on what they are! So... I'd like to try something out. I know my readers are more like in the tens, not the hundreds, and certainly not the thousands! - But - I believe we can make this work anyways, as long as you are willing to participate and leave a comment!
So, I thought it'd be fun to share Christmas traditions. Please, leave a comment and tell us about one or more special tradition that you either grew up doing or do now. It'll be fun to read through these comments and maybe we'll all get some new ideas for our own households! So, I'll start:
1. Favorite childhood traditon - Christmas Eve we'd go to the candlelight service at church, then we'd come home for our annual Birthday Party for Jesus! Sometimes we'd do a mini advent service, sometimes we'd have communion as a family, but we always read the Christmas Story and we always lit candles on an angel food cake and sang Happy Birthday to Jesus! After this, to appease my sister and me, we'd get to open one gift - which evolved into always being a special ornament that was somehow personal to the receiver. We'd then usually watch a Christmas movie till bedtime. Jeni (my sister) and I would always sleep together Christmas Eve and we'd always roll our eyes in the morning as Mom would be blarring music and making lots of noise in an attempt to wake us all up and get us moving! :)
2. My other favorite childhood tradition was driving around through the "rich" neighborhoods, looking at all the beautiful Christmas lights.
3. As I've gotten married and had children, it's been important for Jamie and me to create some new traditions for our kids. One is that we only get/give one gift for each person. So, I receive one gift from Jamie, one gift from Sophia, etc... I also give one gift to Jamie, one gift to Sophia and one gift to Riley. This forces us to be very thoughtful with our gift b/c there is only one shot at making it meaningful! It also forces us to not spend too much on a bunch of junk and to keep the focus off of "getting."
4. To keep a tradition from my childhood alive, we all get to open one gift on Christmas Eve. Instead of ornaments though, we all get new p.j.s!
5. On Christmas morning, we all get together on our bed and read the Christmas story. We then each take a turn and "give" Jesus a gift. These gifts can't be wrapped, but they are something from our hearts. Before we open any gifts we head to the breakfast table and celebrate Christ's birth with a special breakfast!
All right, your turn! Can't wait to hear about all your fun childhood memories and current traditions!
Ruthie :)
6 comments:
One memory from being a child was that my sister, Cathy and I would take flashlights to bed to see if we could catch Santa putting gifts under the tree. But we never used them because we always fell asleep!
I remember in the Congo our Jeni and Ruthie would make their presents!:) I loved those presents!
As I reflect back and think about what we did as a family one of the fondest and most precious memories were the smiles on my grandparents faces Christmas morning. They didn't have a lot of money (neither did we), but they always insisted that Mom buy my three brothers and me a present. Mom didn't want to hurt their feelings and did as they asked.
What could you purchase four kids with $10.00 back in the 50's? Several things, but my mother was practical. We always needed socks!!! Not many kids get a thrill about getting socks – neither did we until we saw the smile on Mamaw and Papaw’s faces as we were opening the presents from them. The joy that was on their faces – oh what a precious vision that is to remember. The four of us were seeing first handed what it meant to them to give!
We loved those two people more than anything and miss them still today. We always got socks from them, and as I got older I got to help Mom shop for them! That was always fun – get dressed up to go shopping with my mother. One small tradition moved onward to another tradition of Mom and me shopping! I could add some of the same traditions that have already been stated (reading the story of baby Jesus, Christmas Canasta at church, and even leaving cookies fro Santa), but this is the first one that came to mind that hadn’t been written down.
The joy we give to others by smiling, saying “thank you,” and giving them a hug can sometimes be the best gift ever!!!
This was a great idea Ruthie!
I love traditions too!! Here's a few know...
When we were little my mom would set up the nativity after Thanksgiving, but with just the manger and animals. Mary and Joseph were set way across the room and as the days went by we'd move them closer and closer to the nativity. (across the top of all the end tables and mantle and etc.) Then on Christmas we'd put baby Jesus in the manger and in January sometime the 3 wise men would finally make it to the nativity! :-)
When my husband and I got married a tradition we started was the Christmas Journal. I found a nice journal that I keep with all our Christmas decorations. Each year we write an entry all about our Christmas that year. I think it will be a neat thing to look back through as the years go on and our kids grow up and maybe even our grandkids! Even so far with just being married for 5 years, each Christmas has been much different than the previous one!
My sister's friends family does a 12 days of Christmas game. The parents make up 12 different fun family activities. (like all go to Wendy's and get frosties and fries or dinner is cave man style and eat everything with your hands -even if it's spaghetti!) Then the 12 days up until Christmas you take turns picking one item out of a hat and then all doing it together!
My friends have 3 little boys and they get them 3 types of gifts each year. 1.) new pj's for Christmas Eve, 2.) a spiritual type gift, and 3.) a game of some kind.
And that last one I can think of right now is a pajama Christmas lights run! My son is just now 1 so he's still a bit young to maybe understand it. But you do it one night close to Christmas once your kids are tucked into bed, get fun drinks and popcorn popped and blankets and put them in the car, then run in and scoop them up out of bed and tell them about the surprise late night outing! (And of course you listen to (or sing) Christmas carols!)
Wow - great comments. I'm impressed by the spiritual nature of so many of these traditions. The ones I can think of are these:
We always had the Hardesty family gift exchange, where you got a gift for someone else and it was a surprise until you opened it. We always met at my Grandma and Grandpa Hardesty's house (my mom's parents) on Christmas Eve for this and my extended family - cousins, aunts, and uncles - all participated. We also had some of Grandma's fudge. These days we've scaled down and do a white elephant exchange. Kids still get one gift under $20 from another cousin under 18 (the kids trade names), but the adults bring a gift under $10 and you get to pick unmarked presents in order from 1 to 18 or 20 (depending on how many of us are there). You get to switch gifts as you go, so it's always a time of fun and laughter. We also now listen to an old tape recording of my great-Grandpa Dailey (my mom's grandpa) reading the Christmas story from Luke in the King James Version, where it says "sore afraid". It's an old cassette tape now on DVD, so that's pretty special since he's been gone since I was about 8.
On Christmas morning, in my immediate family, we also go around from youngest to oldest, opening one gift at a time. This keeps the focus on what others are getting and it makes the process last longer!
When we decorate the tree, we often watch "White Christmas" with Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye. This is one of my mom's favorite movies, and we love the old-fashioned, clean content of this great holiday classic! We also watch the 24 hour marathon of "A Christmas Story" on Christmas day - not the whole 24 hours, but it's on most of the day, so we catch parts of it.
My mom always makes cheesy potatoes on Christmas morning, which are very yummy! And many years we have a Honey Baked ham, too!
As a kid, I always put out carrots, a couple of cookies and milk for Santa. In the morning, I had a note from him thanking me for the good snacks (mom wrote it).
We also always drove through the Richland County fairgrounds to see the Christmas lights there. It was fun to drive slowly through all the twinkly lights with the car windows down in December just to hear the music that played with the lights dancing! We didn't have much money growing up, so this was always something that felt really fun to drive 30 minutes to Mansfield, 15 minutes through the lights, and then back home again! Good family time! :)
I'm definitely going to suggest some of these ideas to my sister, who's making new traditions for Hannah. I especially like the idea of the Christmas journal, moving Mary and Joseph closer to the nativity with each day up until Christmas and giving each person one gift (though that'd be a tough one for us, but it's such a great idea!).
Being your sister, I too fondly remember our Christmases growing up. Mom and Dad always did a great job making Christmas special, and no, we never did believe in Santa! :) OK by me! :) :)
Now that I'm married, David and I have brought traditions from our families and have tried to come up with some of our own. One thing he would do with his dad, and something we want to do when our kids come along, is they would listen to "Peter and the Wolf" on an old record! We want to do this with our kids for sure!
Something we have both found to be special and something we've both enjoyed with our own families is celebrating and focusing on Advent. We have our own Advent candle holder and we have taken to lighting it each Sunday morning of Advent with breakfast. I love Advent and how it helps me to focus on what's truly going on.
It'll be interesting to see what things we come up with next Christmas with our new baby girl and future Christmases as she gets older and is hopefully joined by other brothers or sisters.
On Christmas morning I would dress up as St. Lucia - a wreath in my hair and a white or red robe - and I would deliver breakfast to my parents in bed before opening gifts. My little brothers would help fix the toast and tea while Daniel usually slept. :) I think we learned of the Scandinavian tradition through one of the American Girls books we'd read.
Love you!
Rachel
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