Christmas Traditions

This week we thought we would share a few family traditions. I am starting out the week since my tradition starts on the first of December. We thought if anyone wanted to join in they could. . .

A year or two before Abigail was born I found this adorable wooden countdown-to-Christmas shelf that I just had to buy. At the time I had no idea what I would do with it, but I bought it anyway. I am so glad I did. It has since turned into a tradition my girls love. It is a twist on those chocolate countdown calendars I had when I was a girl. You know the ones where each day you opened the perforated cardboard square to un-veil the piece of chocolate candy as you counted down to Christmas. I loved those as a child, but I had hopes of doing something a little different. I wanted to focus on doing all those things I hoped during the holidays, baking cookies, making ornaments, driving around to see the Christmas lights. . .the count down shelf was my ticket to connecting these two ideas. Each year I make little tags to place inside each door. (I print out the activities on cardstock, cut into a rectangle and staple of piece of ribbon on the top). I use some of the same activities every year like the cookie-baking or ornament-making, but others I change as the girls grow. I look at our calendar for the month and place the obvious tags in their appropriate door. Then I add all the other tags pretty randomly. I also keep a basket on the top of the shelf that contains alternatives. Life is crazy sometimes and some activities need to be changed the night before for various reasons. I try to keep all the activities manageable. They are not all huge undertakings. I have, “Read a Christmas book with dad tonight,” or “Eat dessert after breakfast.” I even have one that says, “Mom will make your bed today.” It is really a way for us to have fun as a family all month long. The girls love that I have taken the time to think about activities they would like to do during the holidays, and I like that I can incorporate traditions that I want our family to carry on. I love that as we get closer to Christmas day, the activities like "Bake a birthday cake for Jesus" and "Play the game What Jesus wants for Christmas” lend themselves to thinking about the real reason we are celebrating Christmas in the first place. This puts the purpose back into the Christmas season, and I love that most of all.

Having two girls almost 5 years apart, I decided to purchase a second countdown shelf at an after-Christmas sale so now I have two. ( I repainted the second shelf last year and still need to paint on the numbers) Since they are so far apart in age, some of the days I have wanted different activities (i.e. Abigail celebrates her Christmas party at school-Maddie obviously is not part of that so I chose another activity for the two of us to do that day). Last year I just put two tags in each door and that worked fine. But I am also one of those mom’s who hopes one day my girls will want to pass on this tradition to their kids and now they each have their own shelf. A bit optimistic I know but a mother can dream can’t she. . .