The Heart of a Family

The Heart of a Family

by Meg Cox

Polly Schroeder of Edwardsville, Ill., uses all sixteen of the characters in her nativity set in her Advent ritual. Nightly, after dinner, her four kids take turns unwrapping a person or animal and placing it in the stable. Whoever has the honor that night also gets to pick which carol the family sings. Before the ritual starts, all the lights in the dining room are turned off and at least a dozen candies are lit. After the figure is set in the stable, a carol is sung, and a Christmas story recited, it's time to snuff out all the candles, a privilege that is divided up among the kids.

The baby Jesus doesn't get placed in the Schroeders' manger until Christmas morning, when the kids sing "Happy Birthday, Jesus" and blow out the candies on a birthday cake (usually angel food) before they open presents. One final touch of genius on Polly's part: the kids wrap up the nativity set pieces after Christmas, while all the wrapping paper is still out. By the next year, they've long forgotten which is wrapped in what.

Another ritual involving candles takes place in the Taylor family of New Bedford, Mass. After dinner on Christmas Eve, an unlit candle is given to each person as they sit around the tree. A lighted candle is on a nearby table. The first person starts by telling about one prayer that God has answered during the past year, then prays aloud for something in the coming year. That person then lights his or her candle from the one on the table. The next person gets a light from the first person, and so on.

"One of my kids thanked God for getting his driver's license," says Joyce Taylor, "and I remember when my husband said, 'Thank God for my wife: she's been my strength all year.' The most moving time was the year my brother stopped drinking and gave God the glory for his healing." Joyce says the ritual was her idea and that it started off a bit awkwardly the first year. "They looked at me like, 'We're doing what?' But once the first person spoke, it was easy for everybody else."

When all the candles are lit, the family sings Christmas carols. Then, the youngest child present is given the honor of putting baby Jesus in the manger, and the family sings "Happy Birthday" to him.

Another woman works with her children each year to help them perform a major good deed "in the spirit of Christmas," such as packing up their old toys for the needy or working in a soup kitchen. Their annual reward is one figure for their own nativity set, so that by the time the kids are grown, they will each have a complete grouping. "I still have the nativity set my mother gave to me," says this woman, "and I still remember what I did to deserve each piece."

From "The Heart of a Family: Searching America for New Traditions That Fulfill Us" by Meg Cox, Random House, 1998. Used by permission.
For more ideas, see the calendar "More CHRISTmas - Less Consuming."