We recently celebrated Ben's first Christmas. Maybe this makes me a bad parent, but I wasn't super hyped up about his first Christmas. I knew he wouldn't remember it and he isn't old enough to care about presents. Now, don't get me wrong, EVERY day I get to spend with my sweet son is a gift, especially because I spend so much time away from him during a typical week. I was thrilled to get an extra day with him that week! But I wasn't eagerly anticipating his first Christmas for the sake of it being his first Christmas.
Christmas was really a fun day of spending time with family. Ben, as always, charmed the socks off of everyone. I expect Christmas to become very fun in the next few years. I think he'll still be a bit young next year, but the year after that, watch out!
It got me to thinking....what do we want Christmas to be like for our children? This is something Josh and I need to figure out together and will probably evolve over the years. We are still discussing it, and this is what we have so far:
We definitely want to have Christmas traditions. My family has an advent calendar my mom made out of felt years ago (before she had children). It's a Nativity scene and you add pieces (crowns for the wise men, stars, angels, animals, and on the 24th-baby Jesus! I used to try to jury-rig it so that I would get to do the Baby Jesus as many years as possible, which was probably a great math problem for me as the number of kids in the rotation changed!) which velcro on-one for each day of December leading up to the 24th. I started something similar (mine is applique fabric instead of Velcro and I am making it from scratch where hers was a premade kit) but haven't worked on it in a while. It's kind of overwhelming! I have the "basic scene" made, but I need to make all the pieces. Whew! I need to get up the energy to pull that project out again, I guess! I don't know what other traditions we want to have. This year, we did lights on our house (just 2 strands which looked a little sad, but the plan is to slowly add to them each year).
We do not want Christmas to be primarily about getting. I have this idea that I want Christmas to be kind of a downplayed day as far as gifts (and to go hog wild with gifts on the kids' birthdays), but who knows how practical that is!
We are not going to tell our kids that Santa is real. We will expose them to the idea of Santa, but only as a story/fun tale that people tell, not as an actual thing, and certainly not as a bribe for good behavior.
That's about as far as we have gotten. What about you? What traditions do you want to have or do you already have for your family?
A good post about Santa:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.comeabide.com/2012/12/much-ado-about-santa.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ComeAndAbide+%28Come+and+Abide%29
Also, we go with the "Something you want, something you need, something to wear, something to read." motto.
Here's the blog post that gave us the idea:
http://jenhatmaker.com/blog/2011/11/29/the-christmas-conundrum
Gary thinks I stress too much about making traditions and they should happen naturally. I don't know what will happen in the coming years for our family.
ReplyDeleteI think next year Ben will understand about "pretty lights" "don't touch[the tree]" and opening gifts. Sophia is 18months old and had lots of fun finding Snowmen, etc on our walks and at stores. We only got her a toddler bible and left all the other gifts to others. She knew how to open gifts! I agree with you about Santa, but we have taken pictures each year for memories and in-laws, but will probably stop by age 5.(and I refuse to pay for pictures, so as long as the local baby store offers the 'bring your own camera' day we will continue :))
We did have homemade cinnamon rolls christmas morning growing up and I'd like to continue that. Gary grew up with tamales for christmas so that will stay also.
I also don't think Chrismas is just about the gifts. One blog I follow: the family chooses a compassion child, samaritan's purse, or other charity to donate to or support as the "big" gift. I really like that idea, so the focus isn't about "what can I get?"