At a recent Christmas party, my colleagues were invited to share their Christmas traditions and ways they celebrate the season. There were stories of gathering with family, baking cookies and making Lefse. One person hikes into an actual forest with his kids to cut down the tree, carrying thermoses of hot chocolate. Another described an advent activity gifted by grandma in which they start each day reading scripture, reflecting and opening a gift. Their traditions were beautiful and poignant and got me thinking about my own family traditions. Or, how they’ve changed.
Right out of the parenting gate, my husband and I were determined to make up for the fact that we had no family in our state. Our kids couldn’t go bake with grandparents, we had no extended family gatherings to attend and they were homeschooled. Given their external Christmas activities were few, we resolved to make Christmas magical in our home. And we delivered.
I used to give the kids the entire month of December off from homeschooling to soak up the season. I bought gingerbread kits and Christmas crafts. We trudged to the tree farm to select and cut down our tree. We decked the halls while listening to carols and sipping hot cocoa. We baked Christmas confections, the highlight being my grandma’s famous hot frosting sugar cookies. We did the Elf on the Shelf, moving him every night into fun poses. I’m particularly proud of the time I spent hours cutting dozens of intricate Star Wars snowflakes then staged it to look like Twinkle did it, just to make my son smile.
Throughout the season, we read Christmas devotions and learned the history of carols. We attended Christmas Eve service then came home and donned Christmas jammies to sit by the fire while Dave read Luke 2. The kids woke up every Christmas morning to piles of presents. And throughout all of this, I kept reminding the kids that Jesus was the best gift of all.
Over the years, I got tired. The kids got older. Life got busy. And though we still worked to make it special, cracks developed in my curated Christmas magic. We cut back on the Christmas crafts and pared the baking down to their absolute favorites. Christmas devotions slowly lost out to Hallmark movies to the point where, one year, I worried my kids would think Christmas is about high powered city divorcees who fall in love with local Christmas tree farmers whose farms their company sends them to acquire.
The elf started staying put for several days at a time, which I explained by doubling down on the lie. “Well, he liked his spot because he could really watch you from there.” To be honest, Twinkle eventually became more like Big Brother, his watchful presence coercing my kids to clean up and do their homework and knock off whatever was annoying me. The happiest day of my Christmas life was when I deputized the teenagers to just do the whole Elf thing for their younger siblings and please keep it G rated for the love of all things holy and decent.
As for the tree … Minnesota is cold. So this experience tended to devolve into freezing, grouchy kids and tears from whoever’s choice of tree wasn’t selected. Also, tree farms charge you an arm and a leg to do the work of cutting the tree for them. So at some point my husband started picking up the tree at Costco. And a few years ago, after our tree was infested with spiders, we switched to fake. The kids were so mad about this change that they threatened not to come home for Christmas.
As they got older, my children developed their very own tradition in that they started making themed PowerPoint wish lists with links to exactly what they want. Armed with this information, we unashamedly overspend more and more every year, despite swearing we will never do that again.
They still make gingerbread houses from Target, but they do this solely to humor me and still bicker over the stingy amount of decor included in the package. This year, their houses wound up looking like toddlers made them, demonstrating how much care they put into this activity.
And baking? We have retained the tradition of making grandma’s Christmas cookies. But a couple of years ago, my adult children sneakily used sprinkles to add … unnecessary details … to the gingerbread men. This delighted my then thirteen year old son, and I haven’t been able to get any of them to stop ever since.
So now, I guess it is fair to say that to celebrate Christmas, we decorate inappropriate cookies and enjoy our fake tree while opening an obscene amount of presents. At least our jammies still match. Usually.
I met my former nanny for coffee and told her about my fall from grace in the Christmas department. She laughed and said she has no memories of unlimited Hallmark movies when my kids were young. She reminded me that my oldest had such a strict thirty minute screen time limit, she held “reading contests” with her while the baby was sleeping. I smiled at former me. So eager. So intense. So determined to do everything right by my kids and right by God. I admire that version of me. I have so much grace for her. And I have grace for me now, too. Because I am still trying to do right by my kids and right by God, even if this version looks different.
One thing so sweet about this season of parenthood is that you can see the long game. You can reflect on how you have grown and changed and decided what to hold on to and what to let slide. You get to see where, given your best efforts and despite your mistakes, your kids know your heart. And so does God.
My kids know they are deeply loved. They love our Christmas traditions and they love that we have relaxed as parents. They love that we can laugh at inappropriate cookies even as I helplessly demand they stop making them. Safe to say they also love that we still overspend.
And most importantly, the thread that has remained throughout our changing traditions is that they know they are deeply loved by Jesus, and He is the reason we celebrate Christmas at all.
This is why, even if ours have lost some of their polish, I will never say that Christmas traditions don’t matter. The decorations, the intentional gathering of family to celebrate, the special food and crafts, songs and decor all are pointing us to something transcendent and holy. They are not sacred in themselves; they are hierophanies inviting us to pause ordinary time and consider the wonders of His love. As McElvey writes, traditions are ways in which we repeat that sounding joy first proclaimed by angels in the skies near Bethlehem and allow us to rehearse our coming joy.
Let every heart prepare Him room, And heaven and nature sing.
Whatever your traditions of holiday trimmings may look like, whether extensive or simple, I encourage you to allow them to interrupt your life and point you to Jesus. Remember that we are preparing Him room with these traditions. And trite as it may sound, He really is the reason for the season.
