One thing that Matt and I quickly realized when we got married was how differently our families "did" the holidays. Once we had kids, we really wanted to set up our own family traditions that were both meaningful and fun. This is the first year that we haven't been able to do a few because of the move, but below is a list of our usual family Christmas traditions:
*Throughout December as cards come in the mail, we open them at dinner and try to pray for whatever family has sent them.
*We make a paper chain the weekend after Thanksgiving with the "ABC's of Advent" on each one, and the kids take turns every day ripping of a link and reading the verse. This one didn't happen this year, but we will go back to it next year.
*On Christmas Eve our kids bake and decorate birthday cakes for Jesus, which we let them eat after church services. We used to let them do their own, but last year we had so much leftover birthday cake I think we are going to have a joint cake this year.
*From us, our kids get three gifts each - one representing each of the gifts of the wise men. We try to do one thing they want, one thing they need, and one surprise.
*On Christmas morning we all get up together and the kids get to open their stockings from Santa, then we eat breakfast and read the Christmas story out of the Bible before they open the rest of their gifts.
*This year we let each of the kids pick out a gift for each other, as well as fill Operation Christmas Child boxes to help get them a little less self-focused.
*Our last tradition is that the week of Christmas I spend the entire time trying to pull my children off the ceiling from their sugar highs and gift giddiness and threaten continuously that Santa will not bring them anything. This is the most fun one of all.
Hope you all have a great Christmas!
1 comment:
Those all sound wonderful. We had also made the 3 gift decision a long time ago in case we ever had kids. So Nadia got one early because the weather has been so nice and the other 2 she can open Christmas morning.
We have also had her be involved with all the volunteer work and angel tree type stuff as you can get a 2 year old into it. When we bought blanket sleepers for the Preganacy Lifeline tree I would show her 2 choices and ask her which ones the baby girls would like better and so on. Then we told her they were for other babies who didn't have as much as her.
She also helped us pick out stuff for the shoe boxes. Our church does our own version that we call "Operation Border Blessing" and they go down to Reynosa, Mexico to the people at the Isaiah 55 ministries that our church supports. Mike and I did the delivery back in 2007 and it was such a blessing.
We also let Nadia have an Advent chocolate caledar which is really liked. Next year we may start doing the Jesse tree, but I like your ABC Advent idea.
Merry Christmas my friend!
Post a Comment