Christmas has always centered around church and spending time with family over the years. There were Christmas parties, Operation Christmas Child Shoebox projects (my church has been an area-wide collection center for over 10 years), Christmas plays, cantatas, Advent, and my favorite, Christmas hymns. It has been hard to keep that up since I've been away from my home church in years past but I hope to revamp my efforts (even far away in Chicago) over the next few years.
My immediate family has never been apart on Christmas Eve or Christmas morning. I don't know how I'll deal with the first Christmas morning that we spend separately. I'm hoping that we find a way to adapt without losing many of our own traditions.
We typically put up our Christmas tree in the couple of days after Thanksgiving. We have a gorgeous 9 foot tree. Fake, yes, but I have no affinity for real trees. They leak sap, they shed worse than sheepdogs, and they are incredibly flammable. I love seeing the ornaments from my childhood every year. Among my favorites: the eskimo ice fishing in a little pond (I definitely tried to melt the pond by running it under water when I was younger), the baby carriage purchased the year I was born, my grandmother's smooth green glass ball ornament and, among others, my sister's hand-painted man who bears a striking resemblance to Mr. Bill.
My sister and I always went to get the other before going to the living room on Christmas morning. My mother always has an elaborate display with some of our larger unwrapped gifts and overflowing stockings spread out under the tree. We never touch any of our gifts without making coffee and/or cinnamon rolls for our parents. It was the only way that we could entice them out of bed before 6 a.m. some mornings. We've become a little more lax in recent years but Christmas morning is always such a wonderful time to be at home with my parents and sister. Sometimes, my sister and I woke up too early -- 4:30, 5:30 so we had to entertain ourselves in the basement with Christmas movies until an acceptable time to wake up our parents. They have always been very cooperative on Christmas morning -- very admirable considering they probably went to bed around 3 a.m. after decorating the living room. We sat around for hours, excitedly watching one another unwrap gifts, gorging ourselves on Christmas candy, and playing with our new gifts -- even as we grew older.
Even after reading multiple articles about Christmas traditions, I'm still not sure how exactly Christmas traditions begin. I we could just keep doing what we're doing: decorating our home together right after Thanksgiving, choosing and sending Christmas cards, walking down Michigan Avenue to see the storefronts, the CTA Christmas train, the Christkindl market, and Macy's, baking Christmas treats, and traveling home to share the holidays with our families. I'm sure that our "traditions" will change as we have children and move around but I think that's okay. The important traditions will stick and the others will fall by the wayside.
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