It's Christmas Eve! And my first one away from our safe haven of family in South Carolina. Other than when I was on my mission, this is my first Christmas away from "home", so to speak. Thank goodness Mom's coming to visit on Friday - it makes it a lot easier for me. We are terribly homesick this year. However, we are keeping busy and finding other things to enjoy, so I'm not trying to throw a pity-party.
A thought has been on my mind about Traditions. Because Ben and I have been around our families, we've been participating in those family traditions for all these years of our marriage. Now that we're in OK, we're discovering just how many traditions we want to keep. For example, in our family growing up we always opened up one gift of Christmas Eve. Since we've been married, we've also spent every Christmas Eve with my family. Since we were opening gifts there, I figured that was keeping with our tradition. The other day Ben and I had a conversation that went like this:
Anita: "So, we are opening one gift on Christmas Eve, right?"
Ben: "We are?"
Anita: "It's a tradition."
Ben: "Since when?"
Anita: "Well. we've always done it, but I guess at my mom's!"
Ben: "Honey, if we open on Christmas Eve, I won't have anything to open on Christmas - I've only got 2 things under the tree."
Welcome to a small family where we each get each other only one thing! And Ben and I didn't get each other gifts this Christmas - we bought a home gym instead so we can work out in our garage. (Ben actually has 3 things under the tree, though.) I guess this is a tradition that we won't keep up our here. Or rather, a tradition we won't start on our own. I guess that tradition works best in a family of 6 kids...
And dinner - Christmas dinner. I'm sorry, but I'm not cooking a bunch of stuff on my own for kids who won't eat it. We're having fajitas! With red and green peppers, of course. And I must have a pumpkin pie, but I'll make something else, too. Chocolaty. And they DID request homemade cinnamon rolls for breakfast, so I'll have fresh bread. Maybe that will be my supper... And if we do the same thing again next year, does that start a tradition for us?
There is one tradition I started this year. We have a beautiful red and gold star box under the tree. Every day leading up to Christmas we give Jesus a present by doing service for someone, or being especially obedient, or something like that. We have to fill out one slip a day with what our gift of Jesus was, and put it in the box. Christmas morning we're going to open the box and read all the slips before we open our own gifts.
So tell me, all of you who have moved away - what traditions have you started?
1 comment:
let me just say that me and danny had a much similar expierence this christmas. neither him nor i had been away from family this christmas. last year we spent Christmas with my mom, and this year we just decided to stay home...since it was going to be too costly for us to go anywhere else for the holidays (since we are saving our money for San Diego in February). we both had the same conversation of what traditions we wanted to keep in our family and what things we wanted to start doing on our own. we both liked the idea of opening a present on Christmas eve...however i was only able to get Danny 1 thing for christmas that he did not know about, so we were in the same prediciment as you. if i let him open that one gift for him then he wouldn't have anthing to open on christmas. so we decided he would let me open one gift and then Danny would open something we got from Niel and Julie. although we did not have a ton of things to open on christmas, it was still fun. I undertook cooking the majority of our Christmas eve dinner this year. i was so excited to cook a delicious dinner, like my mom does every holiday, for Danny since this would be our first one together. i was really impressed with myself how everything came out. i cooked the most delicious ham i have ever eaten, and i cooked really yummy cheese potatoes and baked pumpkin pie and made fruit salad!! Natalie and Brian came over to share Christmas eve dinner and brought more pie and some rolls. it was really delightful. me and danny started one other tradition on our own. we decided that we would start collecting one ornament to put on our tree that year that represented things we had done this year. this week we bought an oranment to hang on our tree that was a glass snowflake that said "Our First Chirstmas Together". we also bought some candy canes and few weeks ago and Danny told me in his family they wait till christmas eve to hang the candy canes on the tree (saying that Santa left them) so we did that too this year. i suppose as the years go by we will adopt more tradtions, but these are what we have for now:)
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