What are some sweet, fun, memorable traditions, games, outings, etc., that you do or have done to celebrate Christmas! I would like to hear of the serious to the jovial of how you remember this Season.
Here is one example that I know some people do: they make a birthday cake for Jesus’ birthday.
Being foser parents, if we have had children in the home at Christmas, we sit in front of the lighted Christmas tree and drink hot chocolate and eat Christmas cookies and read a portion of the Christmas story from the Bible.
One of our best Christmas memories was one Christmas Eve.
Now, you have to understand…I worked as a tour guide in Rockefeller Center. You can’t get more Christmas than Rockefeller Center. By Christmas Eve, we were pretty much sick of Christmas.
But hubby and I were coming home on the subway.
We got off and it was snowing.
The sparkly light snow. The snow that shimmers when it hits the ground.
So we are walking home from the subway in the snow. All the houses had their Christmas lights on.
One house had Christmas music playing outside.
Everything was clean and white and new!
It was just an unexpected moment in time.
The world was perfect!
every year the kids and I do gingerbread houses (towns) from scratch. on christmas eve we get together with family and open the manditory christmas clothes (pj’s and clothing for christmas day). after gifts we read the christmas story. then finally when everyone is in bed, i get to stay up all night assembling various gifts.
Ah, that brings back a memory…
In my teen years, coming home from Midnight Mass with my boyfriend and my sister and her boyfriend. It was snowing huge fluffy flakes, my boyfriend had bought me a Christmas corsage of little red roses that smelled delicious, it was just a storybook evening!
About 11 or 12 years ago, our two sons were both with us Christmas Eve. It had been a long time since that happened. One had been in school and the service, the other with friends and girlfriends. But this year they were both living at home. We went to Mass in the afternoon and out to dinner. Then back to the house. No one was on the phone, no one went to bed early, no one turned TV on. Fire in the fireplace, the tree lit. The four of us talked for hours. The older one married the following year and now they’re both married, so it won’t ever happen again. But it was absolutely perfect.
Now, Rockefeller Center has it’s own Christmas timeframes.
The day the tree comes and you come in to work and this huge tree is there! Watching them build the scaffolding to put on the lights. The way it smells under the tree. Little kids looking up at the lights all bundled up!
The day the animals arrive for the Christmas show at Radio City. The animals get use to it fast, but I remember the lamb trying to nurse my finger when I went to pet it!
Taking a tour, especially one with kids, on the stage and finding the animals there being walked.
Especially the camels. They always pooped and the kids always yelled ewwwwwwwwww!
Watching the tree lighting from the Italian roof garden. Just us (hubby, the other tour guides and the NBC camera crew) because you had to know the elevator operator to get up there.
Then walking back to the subway after it was over, all singing Christmas songs!
But the best…the very best day when you work in Rockefeller Center…The very best day of the year…is when they take that damn tree down!!!
Don’t you stay up after the kid go to bed? just tell them you want to sit out and talk one night, so get some extra sleep the day before. Then you, your sons, you hubby and their wives can talk.
They have kids, their own families. Christmas Eve with little kids is busy. Stockings to be hung. Toys to be put together. Presents to go under the tree. Milk and cookies for Santa. Water for the reindeer.
Two year old son grabbing his godmothers tree and it fell on him!
It is still known as “the year the tree ate Godson”!
He wasn’t hurt, but he left the trees alone after that!
I’m not saying force them, I’m just saying if she said “I would really love to just sit down and talk to you (and you brother, etc.) one night to catch up with you, one night after you have put the kids to bed. We never get to just talk, so you could be ready to stay up a few hours and talk it would mean a lot to me” I think they would be happy to do so.
My wife and I have been talking with the children about what makes Christmas, Christmas: cinnamon rolls, fire, stockings, sleeping by the tree, Advent calendars, nativity set. Interesting that they didn’t say presents. It’s not about the money spent but rather about the time we spend together. Reading the Christmas story and helping children through Samaritan’s Purse are other traditions in our family.
With son, besides leaving milk & cookies for Santa, we’d leave out 8 whole carrots for the reindeer. After son went to bed, his dad would break off the carrots to a nub and them knaw on them to leave teeth marks. Then we’d throw them in the yard so they looked like they came off the roof.
One of my favorite Christmas Eve’s was the one in 1999 when I found out I was pregnant. That night at the family dinner, my husband made the announcement to his family. It was definitely a joyous evening!