brigid: drawing of two women, one whispering to the other (me)
brigid ([personal profile] brigid) wrote2012-11-22 11:18 pm

He knows when you’ve been etc.

Now that Thanksgiving is over, the Christmas Season can officially begin.

Ugh.

Because Niko is only 3 1/2, we don’t really have any solid Christmas traditions for him yet. Everything’s still kind of up in the air. Especially since my Christmas traditions and Nesko’s Christmas traditions are so vastly different in many respects (mine involved no tree until very close to Christmas day, taking it down on the 26th, and lots of Mass; his involves very little religion and an entirely different date). We know from past experience that putting a tree up soon after Thanksgiving and leaving it up until Orthodox Christmas triggers a lot of mental distress in me. So we’ve talked about doing non-tree decorating and then putting the actual tree up later.

Our current plan involves cleaning and prepping the house but not doing any decorating until after Nesko’s Slava, which is St Nikolas, on December 19. That weekend we can decorate and put the tree up and be all CHRISTMAS! YAY! and then leave everything up until the weekend after January 7th, which is Orthodox Christmas. We will probably do Christmas Stockings and one gift (or maybe gifts with my parents) in December, but save most of the unwrapping and celebration for January. Honestly, if I can spend the 25th sitting on my ass eating Pad Thai with glass noodles and watching shitty movies, I’ll be happy. Nesko has to work, of course, so we couldn’t really do anything big if we wanted to.

Speaking of stockings and Santa, I think one family tradition we’re going to establish is that Santa only brings small things, things that will fit in a stocking. I grew up with a kind of unhealthy Christmas gift-giving situation, and I really want to keep the emphasis of Christmas off of gifts and onto stuff like family togetherness blah blah blah. Among his stocking gifts this year will be a bunch of tumbled semi-precious stones because he’s still really into rocks and pretty things. I don’t know if he’s quite up to one of those open-it-yourself geode kits, especially as he managed to destroy one geode I gave him.

How do you handle Christmas, if you celebrate it? How do you blend differing family traditions? Does Santa visit your house? How do you manage Santa gifts?

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al_zorra: (Default)

[personal profile] al_zorra 2012-11-24 01:29 am (UTC)(link)
But my growing up was all about Christmas traditions, and there were so many of them, and there were the family Christmas traditions, the School Christmas traditions, the Church Christmas traditions and the community Christmas traditions. Every group and club and institution had a Christmas party -- yes, every single one of them, from the Ladies Club to the F-H Club to Walther League. That's just for starters.

Christmas was HUGE when I was growing up, out there in rural nowherelandia, a land of ice and snow by Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving through New Year's was in many ways the crown of the year, the best time of the year. And it was all organized around Christmas observations and festivities.

It's not like that now though, though still much remains.

Love, C.
al_zorra: (Default)

[personal profile] al_zorra 2012-11-24 01:32 am (UTC)(link)
But then, our nowherelandia of ice and snow was populated by the people who invented Christmas as we got to know it pretty much, including the Christmas tree and Santa Claus in whatever version, St. Nicolas, Kris Kringle, and they were as present as Santa Claus -- the Scands and the Germans and the Poles. Via the Poles in particular a bit of Orthodox crept in too. As well the Russians within our midst. :)

Love, C,