Christmas Traditions

As we raise our children, Mark and I are developing lots of family traditions. It is really important to us that the kids have certain things that they can count on year after year. It is really important for all of us. Christmas seems to be a time of many traditions.

Here are some of the *new* and *existing* Christmas traditions that the Team Meat family observes.

Hand tree *new*: When we had our basement-reveal party, I asked everyone in our family to help make a Christmas tree for our new basement. We all made a hand-print to help create the tree in the photo. I labeled all the hands. I love the way it turned out. I would like to do this every year, and keep the trees from past years and hang them all up. I will either complete the tree at Thanksgiving, or maybe I'll host a small party at the beginning of December "just because".

Cutting our Christmas tree *existing*: I believe that my parents have always had a real Christmas tree that our family cut each year. They still do. And so do we! We make the cutting of the tree an adventure, and the last few years we have started the tradition of going with Mark's parents. I just love choosing the perfect tree!!

Gammers and Grampa *new*: My parents bought a couple extra gifts for the kids this year, and decided to give them away at the beginning of December. So they came over one afternoon to play with the kids, gave them their cool dressup clothes and a couple Christmas books, and we had dinner together. It was a really great relaxing start of the Christmas season. We're planning to do it again next year.

5 Days of Christmas *existing*: When Mark and I were first married, we were living 2-1/2 hours away from our families. This meant lots of weekend trips home. And it meant that Christmas Eve and Christmas day were spent away from our own house. We didn't want to haul our gifts to each other across the state in order to open them on Christmas Eve or Christmas day. So we developed a "5 days of Christmas" tradition. We would package our gifts to each other in 5 chunks, and sit down with the Christmas tree all lit up to open one each night prior to leaving town. It spread Christmas out for us, and gave us something to look forward to each day of Christmas week. And we usually write clues on the tags so we can try to guess what the gifts are each night, too. Even though we are home for Christmas now, we still do this...we just wait until the kids are in bed. ;)

Christmas card picture *existing*: Since my oldest sister Becky was born, my parents have included a photo in with their Christmas cards. They were always a full-family photo, including my parents, and the photo shoot was always an event. While I didn't always enjoy the photo shoots (there is one year when I was about 8 where I was crying in most of the pictures), it is an awesome tradition and is so fun to look back on. Now, we receive a card from my empty-nester parents each year with a picture of the two of them. I have always loved the tradition, and ever since Mark and I were engaged, we have sent out Christmas cards with photos. Up until 2 years ago, even the pets were included (now, it is just too crazy to try and set up a shot with 4 people, 2 dogs and a cat).

Advent tree *new*: This year, Christmas is so exciting for the kids. I wanted to count down to Jesus' birthday with an advent calendar. Mark's mom gave me a cute advent calendar from his childhood, but it seemed a little too fragile for preschool hands. So Mark bought this advent tree from Starbucks, of all places. It has drawers that pull out, and you turn the drawers around as the month progresses to create a winter scene. The drawers came with chocolates, but in the future I will find small trinkets to represent different parts of the story of Jesus' birth. The kids love the tree.

Gift for Jesus *new*: Mark and I love all of the activities surrounding Christmas, but we definitely want our kids to understand that what we are doing is celebrating the birth of our Savior. So I came up with the idea to purchase a toy as a family to give to a child who could use one through Toys for Tots. In the future, I would like the kids to pitch in some of their saved money to help buy the toy. I want to stress that as we celebrate Jesus' birthday, we should give Him the gift that he asked for, to help take care of those in need. We tried this activity this year. We learned a valuable lesson, the hard way: our kids are too young for this concept right now. The endeavor was not well understood, and resulted in a 3-year old screaming as we left Target because she thought we were at the store to pick out a toy to reward her for doing well on the potty. Bad, bad parenting mistake. Next year, we might be ready.

What are some of your Christmas traditions?