At 21, everybody believes they are an adult and have the world figured out. Add a marriage, and not 1… but 2 children and a 3rd on the way… of course, I was the most mature 21 year old on the planet. Except, at 21, I had yet to master the art of saying ‘no’. In the beginning of our marriage, this meant we followed ALL of BOTH our family traditions during the holiday season. This had us dragging 2-3 children to many different relatives over the course of one day, sometimes to see people they didn’t even know. People they only saw once a year. It bordered from stressful to traumatic. Instead of continuing to run around like a chicken with out a head, we came up with our own solution.
We stay home for Christmas.
However, we have an open door policy for brunch. We have had years where we have had relatives from out of town whom we rarely see arrive. We have had years where we run out of chairs, and we have years where it was a pretty empty house. All in all, it has worked out pretty well. We usually get to see the people who truly matter to us, and, yes, the people we are close to this year may differ to the people we were close to last year. Its all part of growing up and that’s okay too.
Now that we are not constantly following everyone else’s traditions, here are a few other seasonal things we enjoy.
Building Gingerbread houses, specifically on the Wednesday before Christmas.
Baking Christmas cookies; 1000 is our current goal.
Looking forward to Elfie’s shenanigans,
And last, but certainly not least, putting together 100 shoe boxes for Operation Christmas Child.
What does your family enjoy to get into the holiday spirit? What meaning does it hold?
