Holiday Traditions
I was recently thinking about my family’s traditions and realized that most of those traditions have fallen by the way side.
The one tradition that has stuck, is that our family celebrates Christmas on Christmas Eve. I’m really not sure why this started though. If I had to guess it probably had to do with each individual family unit wanting to spend time with each other on Christmas day, so the entire family met up on Christmas Eve instead.
Now that my husband and I have started our own family, I want to start our own traditions. We all think of presents and gift getting and receiving, but my husband and I recently talked about how neither of us really remember receiving any gift for Christmas that really stood out. Nothing that really made a difference. What we remember is the time spent with our family. I want to make more memories like that for our daughter, rather than just buying her tons of toys that will eventually be forgotten.
This Christmas, we started that tradition with putting up the Christmas tree. Our daughter helped decorate the tree with ornaments, some of which she made herself. We all strung garlands of popcorn and ate a bunch of popcorn too. We also made a bunch of desserts including a gingerbread train and cookies. Our daughter helped decorate the gingerbread train and helped measure out the flour and sugar, etc. and “squish” the cookies. It’s adorable to see her look at the Christmas tree and hear her say, “I made that” or when she eats a cookie say, “Kelly helped make them.”
That is what Christmas is about. Not what new gadget is wrapped for you under the tree.
My husband and I were also just saying that we shouldn’t have Christmas lists in the first place. If there is something we want then we should just buy it. If it’s not something we want to spend our money on, then why do we tell other people to use their hard earned money to buy something that we really don’t want or need? It’s a good question.
We’re going with “tradition” this year and buying everyone in the extended family at least one gift, but my husband and I aren’t going to exchange gifts and we aren’t going to buy our daughter anything either (she got way too much from everyone else last Christmas and I assume it will be the same this year). But next year we may switch that up somehow, regarding extended family I mean. Maybe we’ll make crafts/cookies for everyone instead of buying a bunch of “crap.” It can be a new tradition of ours that we celebrate Christmas by making things for people that came from the heart instead of just buying something that we think they might like attached to a gift receipt.
I think you have the right idea about traditions. Certainly repeating certain traditions throughout time helps connect us to former generations and elevates us by providing ritual in our lives. But in my opinion traditions are about the underlying idea. To me Christmas is about generosity but not necessarily material, so in today’s rushed world giving of your time is a gift.
I’m a teacher and at Christmas I make my students a home-made meal and they seem to appreciate that more than the little gifts I used to buy. They get a kick out of the idea that I’m at home cooking for them!
Thanks for the post. It gave me a lot to think about.
Evelyn in Montreal
A Canadian Family
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January 9th, 2009 at 7:11 pm