It’s the Christmas season! Let’s talk family traditions.
This year was only our second American Thanksgiving, and while not having Thanksgiving in October is still a little weird, there is a nice bonus to the change in date. An exciting perk of Thanksgiving at the end of November, is that it jumps right into Christmas.
We get into the family holiday, festive turkey cheer, and all of a sudden the Christmas lights are up! We can see trees decorated in rainbow lights through people’s windows. We put up all our indoor decorations, and the advent wreath is ready with 5 new candles. The countdown to Christmas has begun.
Do you have Christmas traditions you like to celebrate? I love hearing from people about what they do as a family. There’s always that taste of uniqueness in every home. Everyone does their Christmas just a little bit different from someone else’s.
One of my own personal traditions is to watch The Holiday every year by myself. That probably sounds depressing, but the reason behind it is that my husband likes to make fun of the movies I watch and so its more enjoyable by myself. This tradition started when he worked as a pastor. Christmas for the pastor is no vacation. If anything its the eleventh hour. Its go time!
In other words, I took advantage of my husband being away to watch the girly movies I wanted to without being mocked. After I put the kids to bed, I would sit in our basement, light myself a fire, and soak up the lovable charm of Jack Black and Kate Winslet. I watch that movie almost exclusively for the one scene where Miles and Iris are in the video rental store (remember when we used to go to a store to rent movies?) and Miles is singing the theme songs to all his favorite movies to her. If you haven’t seen it, go get it and watch it. Even just that one scene. It’s brilliant. And keep your eye out for Dustin Hoffman.
Movies are a big part of Christmas traditions! Some hunker down for nine hours of Lord of the Rings extended version. Others its How the Grinch Stole Christmas or Home Alone. I’ve heard the argument for Die Hard as a Christmas movie. Apparently Bruce Willis doesn’t think so, but who cares right? It doesn’t have to be a Christmas movie to be a Christmas tradition.
And while I love movies, my first love will always be books. Do you have any Christmas traditions that revolve around words in print?
My favorite as a kid was One Wintry Night by Ruth Bell Graham. It follows the whole Christmas story from creation to the nativity, up to the crucifixion. I mostly loved the pictures. Full pages of complex illustrations of every kind of animal. Faces so detailed they could be real, complete with laugh lines and grey hairs.
My other favorite Christmas book is The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson. It’s even funnier now that I’m a parent, and at least two of my kids could easily be one of the Herdmans. Also, if you’ve spent any time at all in a church, the descriptions of the women running the Ladies’ Aid and the potluck are hilariously accurate. And if you’ve been to a church Christmas pageant a time or two, you can definitely relate to this story. There’s the younger kids as angels or sheep complaining their costumes are too hot. There’s the one kid picking their nose at the front. There’s the young boy who doesn’t want to sing and scowls the whole time. (Cough cough. It’s one of mine.)
Not only is the book ridiculously funny, its also challenging on a deeper level. It challenges us to think about the nativity story in a new way. We hear it so much we forget Mary and Joseph were refugees. That Jesus was an illegitimate child they had to hurriedly marry to cover up. Its easy to settle for a shiny, pristine Christmas story. Safe and snug and happy. But it wasn’t like that at all.
While I love forcing my favorite books on my kids, they rarely share my love for them. Instead, they are coming up with their own favorites. Right now my 3 and 8 year old are obsessed with a Nutcracker book that plays the famous ballet music by Tchaikovsky. My 6 year old keeps asking me to read Finding Christmas by Robert Munsch, where a girl is looking for where her parents hid her presents.
How about you? What are your favorite Christmas stories and traditions? Are you breaking out of the traditions you grew up with and forming new ones?
Whatever your holiday routine, I hope this time of year gets you excited instead of making you full of dread. I hope you have joyful traditions, instead of a heavy to do list.