The Question of Christmas Traditions

I believe family traditions are important, things done over and over tend to be more remembered in a child's mind than most spontaneous and random events, particularly the younger they are. They have the tendency to be carried down by generations because, lets face it, they way something was done while we were children is usually the way we will do it with our children. For better or for worse.

In my house, we had few holiday traditions: my dad always smoked a turkey on the grill resulting in a burnt sacrifice for both Thanksgiving and Christmas. My mother always decorated the house beautifully for Christmas, typically on the weekend after Thanksgiving, if not the day after. Luckily, I married someone who doesn't burn turkeys, but I love to decorate and would do it the day after Thanksgiving if Brian would let me.

Brian's family has a lot of Christmas traditions, some of which were more important to him than others. For example, any picture of him in matching Christmas pajama with his siblings will remind him of how much he hated them - particularly the older he got. However, that is a tradition that the girls and I love and happily carry out each year.

One of his favorite traditions and the one he is most religious about carrying out involves the Christmas Tree. We cannot get a tree unless it is both dark and cold enough to wear a jacket. His venue of choice is the Houston Garden Center because he remembers running around between the trees as a kid and loves to do that with his girls.

Since we are on our own for Christmas for the next couple of years, I thought it would be fun to create some of our own traditions. However, I think "traditions" are best grown organically. Its hard to determine that "this" will be our new family tradition. What if it flops and everyone hates it? You can't just break tradition!

So, I've been on the lookout for new things to try with our family, we can see what we like enough to do again next year. But between homeschooling, house cleaning, 12 hours of Arabic a week plus homework, shopping and various mothering and wifely duties, my ideas pretty much flopped belly up. But I did have some ideas...

Santa Claus: Brian has been adamantly against "Santa Claus" or "Papa Noel" as they call him here, ever since I can remember. Much to my surprise, out of the blue a couple of weeks before Christmas, he turned to me and said: "I think we should do Santa Claus." And as much as I begged and teased for an explanation of his radical change of heart, that is all I got. However, I didn't have extra money to spend this year just so a jolly creature in a red suit could claim some toys under our tree. So poor Santa didn't get much more notice this year than he has any other year. And I don't know what kind of attention he will get in the years to come either. We will have to wait and see.

Somewhere, (I can't remember where exactly) I saw a mention of an Elf on a Shelf and had to Amazon.com him to discover what he was all about. Evidently, the idea is that the Elf watches the children each day and during the night he reports back to Santa on the behavior of the children. Then he reappears in a new place each morning and the kids can go find him. And as much as I love the idea of the girls having to search for him each morning of December, without reading the story, I have a couple of inward qualms about the idea.
     I'm not sure that I want my children to base their behavior toward each other on an Elf. I want their actions and attitudes to be based on either love for each other or fear of punishment from the parentals. I want them to be kind and share and put each other ahead of themselves because it is the right thing to do, not because they expect some kind of material reward at the end of the month. Because what happens in January when the Elf goes into a box for the next 11 months?

I recently read on a friends blog about a Jessie Tree. I'm intrigued and plan on researching this a bit more for next year. (In all actuality, my "research" will probably be as detailed as handing the idea off to Brian and getting his yea or nea on the idea. 'Cause I'm efficient like that.)  

I want to build anticipation with fun and joy around Christmas for my children. I  want it to be a happy time, full of good memories that they can someday share with their spouses and children. But I want the anticipation to be grounded in reality instead of the "gimmes". And I don't want to loose sight of the truth of the reason we celebrate Christmas.

One of my favorite things that my mother-in-law has done for her children and all of her grown children have done as well was to make stockings for each child. This year I added Sophie's stocking to the collection:

(please excuse the back of Brian's head in the picture:) haha)

Prized Christmas Presents

You know you live overseas when prized Christmas presents are as follows:

Merry Christmas!

Alexandria

Last weekend we spent 3 nights and 4 days in Alexandria. It was a much needed, fabulous break from our normal routine.

Our mode of transportation? Why by train of course! A 2.5 hour train ride. The girls are such great little travelers, they played Uno and colored pictures and looked out the window and ate snacks. Sophie was a little squirmy, but that was to be expected.

This is the view from the balcony of our hotel room overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. 

We first found the Library of Alexandria at night which was when this picture was taken.

 The next day, we went to the Library intending to tour it, but when we went to buy tickets we were informed that children ages 6 and under are not allowed in the Library. Since that is 3 out of our family of 5, we were unable to actually go inside. Very sad for Brian, but we will go back another time and take turns touring it.

We also visited the Fort at Qaitbey which included a boat ride on one of the boats you see in the picture behind the girls and a lot of jumping around on rocks you will see in the picture below. The girls spotted crabs between the rocks, dodged cats and watched the fishermen.

We tried three times to see the Catacombs of Kom ash-Shuqqafa and none of the taxi drivers or the horse and buggy drivers knew where they were. But, the horse and buggy guy who assured us he knew where they were took us to Pompey's Pillar instead. And we were pleasantly pleased with our visit.

There were two Sphinx at the base of the Pillar

We spent quite a bit of time with the horse and buggy, Emily loved riding up front. And at one point the man turned down a side street and reshoed the horse.

One of the things that we noticed was that there were not as many Mosques in Alexandria as there are in our city. Because of this, there were lots of temporary prayer mats along the streets.

Sophie was such a good sport although she spent a lot of time in the baby backpack: halfway through the trip, she invented a new way to play "peek-a-boo" with anyone who would look at her and although I am biased, being her mother and all, it was adorable.

Sophie and I reading Curious George while we wait for the return train.

We wore the girls out during this trip, but we had such a great time. And Brian enjoyed the snuggle time with the baby person during the train ride home.