Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Christmas Traditions

I love Christmas and Christmas traditions. My youngest son is six and I was so happy to see the look of delight on his face as he recounted our families traditions. It just warmed my heart to share in the memories from his young point of view. My husband is also a tradition fanatic, more so than me.

As I reflected on the traditions that are important to me and to my children I began wondering about what the traditions are meant to celebrate. I mean we are remembering Jesus' birthday but most of our traditions focus on us, more specifically presents and a tree. We get together with family and stuff ourselves but is that really how we should remember the birth of Jesus? I want to know how to celebrate and remember the birth of Christ so that He is the center of all our traditions. But I'm not sure how. I also don't want to be extreme and purge every trace of santa.

What traditions do you have? How do make sure to honor and include Jesus in the celebration?

1 comment:

Kristi said...

I've been thinking about this same thing, Sarah, with many of our holiday celebrations. I want Thanksgiving to be more than just overeating good food - Easter more than eggs & chocolate - and Christmas, well, you get it. I've been thinking about how to convey to the kids that we are celebrating Jesus' birthday (since birthdays are so huge for them), but that he wants us to share our gifts with each other, rather than get him anything. Great lessons in there on sharing, unselfishness, etc. I don't know - write more about conclusions you come to about this!