Family Christmas Holiday Tradition gives us freedom and guidance in a time that is otherwise hectic and stressful, and often unorganized. Tradition gives us a blueprint of how our family anticipates and loves the vacation season, what they expect, how they love to celebrate.
Tradition gives us the chance to set down our Christmas holiday activities well in advance. We are able to prepare an agenda of action, and organize our holiday events employing a true and proven site map. That will be taking off stress from eleventh hour activities, e.g., the frantic seek out needed holiday decor, or the headache of discovering the right holiday menu.
But what shall we do, if our family does not need a Christmas holiday tradition yet? Simply, we create our personal tradition. Let’s open the music box of our personal childhood memories. The thing that was it that made Christmas holidays so special? Was it the heavenly scent of cinnamon, orange and fir, all woven to the air in a potpourri of Christmas promise? Or do we remember mother’s Christmas story at candlelight? Was it the vacation music that touched our heart? With our personal Christmas holiday memories in mind, let’s manifest our personal family Christmas tradition! Here are twelve ways!
1. Build the excitement and joy up in your and your family’s heart. Start with decorating your home to invite Christmas promise into your family’s life. My mother used to decorate every picture within our house or apartment with only a little fresh and wonderfully smelling fir twig. Whenever we saw that mother was finding your way through the holidays, excitement accumulated within our lives.
2. On December 1st, we introduced a fir wreath with four candles. Often three of the candles were purple, but one was pink. Coping with the very first a couple of weeks, we children were eagerly looking forward to the 3rd Sunday when the pink candle of Joy and anticipation was lit.
3. Obviously, we had an Advent calendar and among us was allowed to open a window each day. This meant that we children went to great length to ensure that we were good kids – cleaning our rooms, removing the trash, washing the dishes, etc. – so each one of us got a turn to open a window.
4. It was custom a Madonna statue was carried from house to accommodate in memory of Maria’s search for a place to provide birth to her child. Then when it had been our turn to open our family door and heart to Maria, our mother would bathe the room in warm, gentle candle light. We sang the old carols and prayed. It was an honor to support the statue for one night, and every family tried to get ready a unique welcome.
5. On the 4th of December, mom would generate St. Barbara twigs from the garden. These cherry twigs, now brown and barren, will open their blossoms in the holy night. We watched the Barbara twigs carefully every day with excitement and wonder. Because out of those seemingly dead brown twigs, soon little green leaves would develop in the warm family room.
6. The 6th of December was St. Nicolas Day. Which was each day of joy for children. In the window we would find a red crackling plastic sack with apples, mandarins, nuts and chocolate. However in our family it had been also tradition that St. about the Christmas holidays Nicolas would visit in person. From the one special visit, when St. Nicolas admonished my little brother who was simply very bad in my experience at the time. The small guy did not understand that anyone would know – especially not St. Nicolas, the old wise man with the sparkling eyes and the long white beard, who supposedly came directly from heaven into our home. From that day one, my little brother did not bother me ever again. I guess he learned his lesson.
This ends Part I of our Family Christmas Holiday Traditions. Be sure to read Part II also. We’ll discuss the traditional Christmas celebration, share a lovely and moving Christmas story, and much more.
When Christmas holiday draws near, don’t let yourself be burdened by stressful eleventh hour holiday preparations. Follow your time proven family holiday tradition – and in the event that you don’t have a holiday tradition yet, manifest your personal! Utilize a number of the suggestions I distributed to you from our personal family Christmas holiday tradition.