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)