Christmas Traditions

A friend of mine blogged about Christmas Traditions in their family. I thought it was a good idea, so I decided to do the same. It's hard to have a lot of family traditions when you move around every couple of years as far as doing things locally every year, but we try to be at least be consistent about what we do in our home:

1. GINGERBREAD AND COOKIES: This year we're doing a gingerbread train, but typical the kids and I make some kind of Gingerbread house. We usually just buy a kit because I'm lazy, but the kids really enjoy putting it together and decorating it. If I have the time, I really do love to bake, so Ethan and I have made cookies together since he was very young. Nolan finally got in on the fun last year. They love to help put the ingredients in and decorate. We'll see if I let Lydia join us this year.

2. CHRISTMAS EVE PRESENTS: I remember always looking forward to coming home from church on Christmas Eve and being able to open one present. It kind of satisfied the "need" to open presents. I've incorporated that into our family traditions with a little bit of a twist. My kids get to open 2 gifts (the only gifts from mom and dad)...Christmas pajamas and an ornament. It doesn't always work out, but I try to get matching pajamas (might as well while Ethan still thinks it's cool to match his brother and sister!). The ornament is usually something that shows an interest from the past year. It's hard to do when they're really little, but it's been fun going back through Ethan's ornaments over the last 6 Christmas' and remembering why he got each one. My hope is that when they start their own families, they'll have some meaningful ornaments to put on their Christmas trees.

3. THE REASON FOR CHRISTMAS: Our kids believe in Santa and get excited about him bringing presents, but we try to reinforce the fact that Christmas is first and foremost about celebrating Jesus' birth. When Ethan was very young, we started the tradition of me reading the story of Jesus' birth from the Children's Bible while James "checks if Santa came" and gets the downstairs ready. I think it's important that they always remember that Christmas is about Jesus and how important He is in our lives.

Hopefully we'll develop more traditions as the kids get older, but this is all we have right now.

Merry Christmas!