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

Mirrored from Now Showing!.

Comments

[al_zorra]

First: how does anyone, much less a small child destroy a geode?????? :)

At the moment part of my traditions are looking frequently at videos of our FLOTUS making Christmas at the White House. She does things pretty, warm, colorful, yet elegant, and most of all she does things affordably. You can do the things she does, with adjustments for scale, of course. And as I have no room for trees or displays in our tiny place, what she does sort of stands in. I never felt that way about anyone else doing White House Christmas, however.

As both of us are not close with our families, everything we do is just about us. The best part is that we don't do things the same every year. Some of our best Christmases were far away from the U.S.

With children it's very different though.

Whatever you do, as long as the child gets the sense this is so special you do it only once a year -- that is Good!

Love, C.

[al_zorra]

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]

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,

[brigid]

It was a small geode between the size of a large walnut and a small plum, thin walled, with tiny delicate crystals. I was a fool to give it to him. He threw it around and then put it in a container with some other larger rocks and it broke up. I also gave him my slab of amethyst crystals and that got cracked up, too. Again, my fault for giving something to a small child who plays with stuff roughly.

[al_zorra]

Ah!

I too played with rocks that sparkled as a child.

These days it's jewelry. Generally very cheap jewelry of which there's enormous amounts.

But when el V was in Angola he brought back for me some very nice pieces -- nice by my standards that is. By the standards of the industry they are surely junk. Otherwise they'd not have been brought back.

Love, C.