He knows when you’ve been etc.

[brigid]

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?

Technorati Tags: child, christmas, family, holidays, parenting, santa, toddler, traditions

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Comments

[the_rck]

Our Christmas traditions are in flux-- My nine year old figured out a couple of years ago that her parents are Santa (she found a stash of presents before Christmas and noted that, on Christmas, some were labeled as from Santa). We're still last year, we still labeled some stuff as from Santa, but I don't know if we will this year. There pretty definitely won't be milk and cookies left out for Santa.

My family's tradition on trees was to put the tree up no sooner than the weekend before Christmas and to leave it up until the 6th of January. My husband's tradition is to put it up sooner and take it down sooner. Our compromise has more to do with when we have time available to do the work. We tend to put it up relatively close to Christmas and take it down the first weekend after New Year. Our living room is small, and the tree takes up a lot of room.

I have kept one tradition from my family-- I make a Swedish rice porridge for Christmas breakfast. My mother used to make it Christmas morning, but I make it a day or two in advance (it takes at least an hour) and just reheat it on Christmas.

We spend Christmas day with Scott's family because they're relatively local. I miss my relatives around Christmas, but they've mostly all moved to other states. My brother, who lives two hours away, is the closest, and he has a standing invitation to Scott's family's Christmas, but he mostly chooses to stay home. At least we got him for Thanksgiving this year.