Our Christmas routine built up over the years into a frantic attempt to shove the True Meaning of Christmas down everyone’s throats. We did service projects, Secret Santa trades with the siblings (you know, they draw a name and do nice things for that person for a week), scriptural advent calendars, multiple Family Home Evening lessons, carols, reading scriptures and singing every night, making dozens of hand-decorated cookies for teachers and neighbors… AAAAAGH! I felt guilty that my kids WANTED presents (gasp!). I somehow thought that this was my big occasion to make a spiritual mark on the family. I don’t believe that anymore.

So now I’m determined to relax. I still send out dozens and dozens of cards because it’s important to me. I love buying gifts for my kids and I refuse to feel badly for indulging their lust for worldly treasures once a year. We focus on a few spiritually-centered activities and other traditions that are special for us, and every time I get the guilt-filled urge to do more religious/spiritual things or fewer non-religious things, I remind myself that our family’s devotion to Christ is not dependent on what we do during the month of December.

I love the ideas here, thank you for sharing. I love the candlelight and votives, the three gifts, the plea for sanity from Dalene. Each year I vow to try better. Maybe this year will be the one.

Thanks for the ideas and the encouragment. I really appreciate it.

Our favorite family tradition is eating our Christmas Eve dinner by candlelight. We have a big candle in the center of the table that represents Jesus, and each person has a small votive of their own. We each light our candle from the big one and read a “light” scripture. It’s simple and the kids love it.

I love decorating and putting up the tree, but I hate the shopping and all the new stuff we get that I now have to take care of, dust, insure, clean, and store.

j5t: Let’s have a field trip this season to see if my Griswold-y neighbors can hold a C-7 bulb to your Griswold-y neighbors. I save a grundle on my electricity bill because their lights are so bright there’s no need for me to decorate–I can just look out the window across the street!

We do the ornament thing too. I’ve heard about the jammies tradition, but with four boys/men in the house I haven’t bothered. Do you know how hard it is to get the male species to wear pajamas?

The biggest challenge–but also the best part–is to get your kids to think about giving more than about getting. Some years are better than others. But the best Christmases are when we actually succeed.

The best answer I ever found was Unplug the Christmas Machine. It helped me figure out how to celebrate Christ’s birth joyfully and meet my family’s actual hopes and not my exaggerated misunderstandings.

Funny, I thought about Christmas gifts for the first time this week too. Finishing shopping before Veteran’s Day is a bit strange, up there with once-a-month cooking and stamping everyone’s birthday cards on January 2nd. Though my very nice friend Janet D. can do all that and never boast.

To those over-organized ladies who do boast, I say James 4:13-16.

All I know is that the more effort I try and put into Christmas, the more mellancholy I feel. Just do the things that make YOU and Chup feel good and embrace family and love and others… and make sure your parents still get you whatever you want.

Also, I’m sandwiched (across the street and behind us) between the two most Griswold-y families in all of Provo: They already have a plethora (yen) of lights on their houses, and they’re out there adding more and more each day. This year (week), that got me thinking about how I actually like Thanksgiving, and I wish more people celebrated it instead of just treating it like a filler between Halloween and Christmas.

What we do:
~as I said before, let Thanksgiving be Thanksgiving and decorate for Christmas AFTER.
~new Christmas jammies given to wear the entire month of December (and, inevitably, during the summer sometimes)
~a new ornament for each kid, each year
~On Christmas Eve, take a plethora (yen) of items to The Road Home, a homeless shelter in Salt Lake
~Each kid gets three gifts (two from parents, one from Santa, plus stocking) because that’s how many Jesus got. I totally bogarted this from la yen.