I’ve tried various esoteric practices involving veiled candles, bits of straw, paper chains, acts of service, gift lotteries, medieval anagrams, and every other kind of overachieving cultural what-have-you that caught my eye while I was desperate to make everything Meaningful For The Children.
I remember one year worrying so hard about materialism that I told the kids that one of their presents would be the opportunity to choose a gift for a poor child, and donate it. It wasn’t a bad idea . . . for the older kids. The younger kids, predictably, misunderstood horribly, and it was bloody awful. I only hope they’re so young, they don’t remember the year Mama apparently told them they could pick a toy for themselves and then forced them to dump it into a box and walk away for no reason at all. AT CHRISTMAS.
So. We don’t do that anymore. Through the decades, here is what I have learned about Christmas family traditions . . .
Read the rest of my latest at The Catholic Weekly.
Im legit impressed you do a Jessie tree.
I have found that it doesn’t matter how often you do a tradition, the kids will remember it as having happened every year anyway. For instance, lighting the Advent wreath and singing O Come O Come Emmanuel seems like an easy one to keep, right? But there were probably two or three years where I was too drained from sh…tuff going on in our lives that I couldn’t even deal with simple ones like that. Even so, every one of my kids could a pass a lie detector test that lighting the Advent wreath and singing O Come O Come Emmanuel is a set in stone tradition that we’ve done faithfully every year.
As a protestant ethnic german family we were taught the shoe treat day was when Knecht Ruprecht, an elf, put candy in your shoe.
Great article!
And I gotta know… do you write things like “bloody awful” or does an editor go through and replace something like “freaking terrible” for you?
Ha! no, I guess that’s just something I say. They do change the spelling of some words, like “colour.’