The Book of New Family Traditions (38 page)

Just the Tree, the Dark, and Us

All the nights running up to Christmas, just before bed, we turn out all the lights in the living room except those on the tree and just quietly sit on the sofa together and enjoy it. This is a winding-down, smell-the-evergreen experience, where we each point to some of our favorite ornaments and talk about the vacation where we bought them or the person who made or gave us that beautiful or special object. Doni Boyd in Oregon does something like this with her family, but they take turns picking Christmas songs to sing as well.

A good Christian website with background information on all the religious traditions of Advent, including the Advent wreath, and Bible verses to read during the weeks before Christmas is
www.Crivoice.org/cyadvent.html
.

More Family Christmas Celebrations

Camp Christmas

One winter when she had sixteen family members coming to visit her in Texas for the holidays and a limited amount of funds, Mary Kay Havens and her daughter created “Camp Christmas.” They chose the word “camp” to suggest informality (sleeping bags and all) and fun, group activities. The highlight was a group carriage ride around Dallas, followed by a candlelight church service, but much of the time was spent at the Havens house, doing things in shifts. Onesmall group would bake cookies while another sang carols and a third decorated Santa hats.

Candle Night

On Christmas Eve after church, the Straws light every candle they own. They read the Christmas story from the Bible and eat Christmas cookies with milk. The Taylor family of New Bedford, Massachusetts, has a different candle ritual that night: Sitting around the tree, each person is given an unlit candle. A lighted candle is on a table nearby. The first person lights his or her candle, tells about a prayer that God answered in the past year, then asks for help with something else. He or she lights the candle of the next person, who does the same, and so on. When all the candles are lit, the family sings carols and the youngest puts Jesus in the manger under the tree.

Journey to Bethlehem

In Nevada, the Hiltons pretend one night to follow in the footsteps of Mary and Joseph. They troop through the house and yard, as though on a journey, winding up at the foot of their Christmas tree. By candlelight, they have a picnic on a blanket, eating foods Mary and Joseph may have had, such as pita bread, fruit, and nuts.

Joy Balls

This charming idea was found within an annual e-mail list called Christmas Joys, which seems to be discontinued. A woman named Sally said her family had a tradition at Christmas parties of having something called a Joy Ball, which was like a piñata, but with toys, not candy. All year long, the parents would squirrel away little gifts costing $1 or less, wrapping each one in scraps of leftover Christmas wrap. Then they wrapped all of them in crepe paper strips, starting with one small gift, wrapping and adding gifts until there was one big ball. As the gifts were added, the crepe paper ends were just tucked in slightly: Only the last strip of crepe paper was secured with tape, so once the unwinding began, momentum would pull the ball apart. When all were ready to play, everyone got on the floor. The tape at the end was removed, and family members batted the ball around madly, grabbing gifts as they fell out.

Hay Foot, Straw Foot

Most of the Tilney family’s holiday traditions have to do with “delayed gratification,” insists Merritt Tilney. “We are not allowed to even look into the living room where the Christmas tree and presents are until we have completed the Hay Foot-Straw Foot ritual, opened our stockings, and eaten a complete breakfast,” she says. Nobody dares cheat, she explains, because of the oft-told tale of a Tilney aunt who took a peek and saw the new bike she wanted so desperately. Her dad discovered the breach in protocol and removed the bike. She couldn’t speak up, because she wasn’t supposed to know about the bike. (It showed up for her birthday, in May.) In any case, the Hay Foot-Straw Foot ritual consists of the extended family lined up at the top of the stairs, oldest to youngest, hands on the shoulder of the person in front. As they troop down the steps, they all chant this old Revolutionary War rhyme that was designed to teach yokels how to march: They tied hay to the left foot and straw to the right, and since they knew hay from straw better than right from left, it worked for marching practice. Merritt says they do one verse standing still, then keep repeating the chant until everyone is downstairs, ready to enter the room with the Christmas stockings.

Hay foot, straw foot,

Belly full of bean soup,

January, February, March!

Christmas Reading Rituals

Literary Advent Calendar

When my son was little, every year around Thanksgiving, I would dig up every holiday-related book we had ever bought and wrap them all in Christmas paper. I laid them all out on the floor, so I could see which book falls on which day, and as I wrapped them, I taped a number between one and twenty-four on the front of the package. (If you don’t have twenty-four books, use a few from the library before they’re due, cut out a Christmas story from a magazine, or wrap a holiday DVD.) I always put the number 24 on
The Night Before Christmas
, so we could read that Christmas Eve, and if it’s a longer than normal book, it would be scheduled on a weekend date. (Like J. R. R. Tolkien’s wonderful
Letters from Father Christmas
, which is a storybook full of letters you take out of envelopes and read.)

Then, starting after supper on the first day of December, I would place a book under our felt Advent calendar (which hung on a doorknob in the playroom). The nightly ritual was that my son would take a felt ornament from a numbered pocket and put it on the felt tree, after which he was allowed to open the day’s book. To preserve the sense that these books were only for special times, I packed them away in a box in the attic after the holiday.

For years, this was possibly my son’s favorite holiday ritual outside of opening presents on Christmas morning. There was something so special about unwrapping a beloved book, such as
How the Grinch Stole Christmas
, then having him climb into my lap to hear the story. It actually seemed to mean more that he had heard most of the stories, because that is what tradition is all about: stoking the memories, and then reliving those favorite times.

I got this tradition from Nancy Giehl of Boulder, Colorado, who read it in
Family Fun
magazine, and I have since passed it along to many families. I know some families with more than one child who wrap their holiday books in different colored wrap. So if you had two kids, for example, you could wrap twelve books in red and twelve in green, and they could take turns opening them.

Night Tree

The Brock family loved this holiday book by Eve Bunting, which is based on an actual family’s Christmas ritual. The family in
Night Tree
visits the same pine tree in the nearby woods each year on Christmas Eve, decorating it with treats for birds and other wildlife. The Brocks follow the ritual pretty closely, but they go to a wooded area on their property in Cheny, Washington. Beforehand, they make a garland of cranberry and breakfast cereal (popcorn works, too) and roll pinecones in birdseed after slathering them with peanut butter. After decorating the tree together, they sing carols and drink hot chocolate from a thermos.

More Great Christmas Books

There are classics like
The Night Before Christmas
, but here are some lesser-known books my son loved:

•
The Polar Express
, by Chris Van

Allsburg

•
The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan

Toomey
, by Susan Wojciechowski

•
December
, by Eve Bunting

•
Olive, the Other Reindeer
, by J. Otto

Seibold and Vivian Walsh

Great Christmas Websites

There are hundreds of Christmas websites, a vast majority of them tacky or designed mostly to make a quick buck. Here are a few that provide excellent resources and have lasted longer than a nanosecond.

WhyChristmas.com
was first launched in 2000 by James Cooper, a Christmas-loving web designer from the United Kingdom. It’s clever and totally packed with resources such as Christmas customs from all over the world, recipes, and fun features like “Christmas Karaoke,” which allows you to sing along to fifty popular Christmas carols. Unlike most of the big holiday sites, it doesn’t sell ads, so there aren’t constant pop-ups and other distractions.

MyMerryChristmas.com
is an established mega site with an enormous quantity of content. It claims to be “The Internet’s largest ongoing celebration of Christmas and the world’s largest Christmas community.” There are loads of resources, for instance, reviews of holiday-themed movies and television shows and fun regular features such as “Santa Speaks,” an annual interview with the bearded one himself. This site is more of a community than most in that it includes an active message board and activities such as an ornament exchange, but you must become a member to do those more interactive things.

Northpole.com
is arguably the cutest and most established Christmas site for kid-friendly content. It’s been around since 1996, which is practically ancient for a website. The home page is set up like a village map, where you find yourself at the North Pole and have a choice of buildings to visit, such as the Toy Shop, Reindeer Barn, and Mrs. Claus’Kitchen. Kids can write and send letters to Santa and read stories about elves and reindeer and other North Pole occupants. A more recent addition is a wonderful educational feature called Elf Pal Academy that includes games, crafts, and activities for children.

Christmas Gift Rituals

One way to add meaning to the holiday is to give fewer gifts, but make the giving of them part of the ritual.

Three Gifts

Some families give each of their kids only three gifts, explaining that Jesus received three gifts from the wise men, and why should anyone else get more? The Suk family of Evanston, Illinois, follows this practice, but creatively. Each child gets one book, one game, and one toy, usually something major like a bicycle or electric guitar. The little things are wrapped and under the tree, but the major gifts are hidden, and the kids have to solve clues to find them. One year, the clues led to a garage-door opener, which led to a neighbor’s garage and the hidden bike. The whole family troops around together as each child searches, youngest first.

Goofy Slippers

Pam Pinegar, a self-described “small woman with big feet,” started a tradition with her two daughters that each year they buy one another the goofiest slippers they can find. Theme presents are fun, and many families give their kids new, Christmas-themed pajamas on Christmas Eve (at least no one looks ratty for the family photos).