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Family Traditions

Family Traditions (1)

Elaine Wilburt, Easton, MD

Blessing Basket

For Thanksgiving, place a basket as a centerpiece. Ask those gathered to fill it with handwritten notes or objects that detail or represent the year's blessings. During Advent, empty the basket by sharing those blessings with family, friends, and others. On Christmas Day, use the following devotional:

Ask family members to describe one blessing that they shared.

Pray - Lord, Giver of All, we thank you for the many blessings that you have given to us. And we ask that you teach us to be good stewards of all our talents, time and material goods. Help us to recognize and use the opportunities that you give us to share our blessings with others in the coming year. Most of all, we thank you today for the amazing blessing of Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us. Amen.

Read the Christmas story.

One Gift

My husband and I decided, when we married eight years ago, that we would exchange one gift for Christmas. Together we choose a charity to receive a donation equivalent to what we might have otherwise spent on one another. We have also used that money to purchase food and gifts for needy families. With the birth of our daughter this fall, we plan to continue this practice with her, including her in the decision-making and the gift-giving when she is older. We will place a wrapped box under the tree to represent our gift to others, and we will wrap a bow in a second box to remind us to give ourselves as gifts to others and Christ.

Cross in a Cake

Bake a "birthday cake for Jesus" to share at Christmas dinner. When preparing the cake, place a ceramic or metal cross in the pan with the batter. The person who finds the cross in his cake can hang it on the tree as the last ornament, a reminder of why Christ came to us at Christmas.

Similarly, during the Sundays of Advent, family members can make a special cross ornament to place on the tree on Christmas day.

Prayer

God of Justice, We thank you for your gift of Jesus. How amazing that you could come to us as a tiny, helpless baby, that the Word of God appeared as a wordless one! We praise you for sending Jesus to bring us forgiveness through his death on a cross, so we could be called your sons and daughters. Amen.

Family Craft Day

A friend of ours always holds a family craft day during Advent. All of her family members gather to make ornaments and other crafts to give away to friends. Not only do they enjoy fellowship with one another, they make wonderful keepsakes and give of their talents instead of simply buying gifts.

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Family Traditions (2)

Rita Iversen, Sioux City, IA

Make New Traditions
But Keep Some Old,
One Is Silver, the Other's Gold

As a child, my family had three Christmas Eve traditions: going to see the lights, opening presents, and eating oyster stew for dinner.

I only continued one as an adult - going to see the lights. My husband knows that the best present he can give me after an especially exhausting or exasperating teaching day is to drive me to look at the lights.

We let the children decide how and when we would open presents. It varied from year to year. . . Christmas Eve. . . Christmas morning. . . half on Christmas Eve and the rest on Christmas morning. My personal favorite was opening one a day the week before Christmas.

Oyster stew never made it into my adult Christmas at all!

We added some of our own Christmas traditions over the years. We made small gingerbread houses for the children's teachers. We caroled as a family in the homes of elderly or housebound people. I never cooked on Christmas Eve. We ate favorite foods.

One person opened a present while everyone else watched. Then that person chose and presented a gift to another person to open. We continued until all were opened.

Each person wrote their own section of the family newsletter.

Here are a few other traditions that I would suggest as a teacher.

Do something together for someone outside the family. It can be to serve at a soup kitchen, deliver food to a food pantry, shop together and buy a present for a Salvation Army "giving tree."
Ask your children to make a short "wish list" for presents. Let them know the spending limit.
Allow the children to open one present a week during December. The amount of stress I see in my fourth graders the weeks before Christmas is incredible. They are literally drowning in the media, newspaper, talk, and hype about Christmas. They are like pressure cookers about to explode. I say, jokingly but truthfully, "The closer Christmas comes, the fewer brain cells are functioning at school."
Keep food simple. Decorate cookies together as a family.

I like that old saying, KISS - "keep it super simple." Less is really more at Christmas. It's the traditions and time together at Christmas that they will remember and cherish.

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