Traditions

I have really liked our sermon series at church. Our pastor has talked about the paradox of Christmas. Identifying with the sacrifice of the birth of Jesus compared with our quest for stuff in shiny packages. Today, he discussed joy and sorrow of the season. This really spoke to me, especially the sorrow part. It reminded me of all the people who cannot be with us this Christmas for one reason or another. I thought of the babies, relatives and friends etc...  However, the suggestion was to surround the sorrow with joy. This reminded me of all the Christmas traditions my children have come to depend on. Things that give me great joy to do.

One of my favorites is known as "WFSJ's".  This refers to my tradition of purchasing special Jammie's for each child to wear Christmas Eve.  In my mind these are not just any Jammie's. They have to have a special meaning. There were the Ohio State Jammie's for my Ohio kid, and the Star Wars Lego Jammie's for another kid etc...  I like the Jammie's to be reflective of who they are. This year I got awesome and unique Jammie's, however cannot share what they are as one of my children reads this!  Jack has taken the wfsj tradition and added a Santa hat. He has to sleep in a Santa hat Christmas Eve too, another tradition that has spread to the other kids too. In fact, today we had to be sure we knew where the hats were.

Then, there are the presents. Each year the kids each get a stuffed animal. These too have had themes like last year when they all got giant Angry Birds. They each get a Starbucks mug, which in all reality is more reflective of me lol!  Probably the most fun thing is baking day. My mom always put Johnny Mathis on the stereo and we rolled out cookie dough and  decorated them. I carried this tradition on too. It was always funny to me that when the children were very little we ended up wo just two or three cookies with two pounds of decorations on them and the others were plain. They would carefully see how much they could get on the one cookie, painstakingly taking forever to do it, then lose interest. Well, that or have a tummy ache from eating too many sprinkles and frosting. The important thing was they established the ever important cookie for Santa.

So many things help us to celebrate the Christmas season aside from this.  There is spiral cut ham, heart attack potatoes, kids in Jammie's all day, Christmas movies all afternoon, and a relaxing mom and dad. Yes, I will take joy in all of this in the coming days, and dream of the days the babies will be here to enjoy it.