Saturday, December 27, 2008

Traditions

My friend, Deborah, wrote about family traditions in her blog. This year my thoughts had been very similar in that I didn't think that we had holiday traditions. I had lamented this fact to Mark, who just gave me one of his famous looks that read, "Woman, what are you talking about?"

Deborah asked that we blog about our traditions. I will attempt to tell our singular holiday tradition. We celebrate Advent. We have celebrated Advent since the late 1980's. We had friends in seminary who celebrated Advent and they introduced this wonderful tradition to our family.

One year on Christmas day, our Advent wreath caught fire. Of course, we had company over and there was a bit of a commotion as Mark's tried to blow out the dried Christmas foliage with which I had surrounded our wreath. While we didn't think it humorous at the time, it has become one of those funny stories that our family tells.

This year, a dear friend, Lynda Talmadge, gave our family a beautiful new Advent wreath this year as an early Christmas present.

Our lovely new Advent wreath!


We used to light a candle every evening during supper but as our sons have gotten older and our schedules different, we chose to light our candles the four Sundays before Christmas. Since we all attend different churches, the lighting of our Advent wreath every Sunday brought both of my sons home for Sunday dinner after morning worship. I loved it.

Christmas eve, we pause to once again read and listen to the birth of our Savior and we light the center candle.

Eating supper on Christmas eve, with our large Christ candle gracing our table to remind us of our Lord.


Christmas morning, I change all the weekly candles to white and we burn all the white candles along with the Christ candles for hours. Those little lights remind us of the true reason we celebrate this season.

Another tradition when the children were little was to open two gifts on Christmas eve - their pajamas and their new Christmas ornament. Well, this year, there were no sweet Christmas jammies under the tree. Instead, the boys were allowed to open all of their together gifts that their dad and I had bought them. These included two games, several Wii accessories, and a new Wii game.

Michael, me and Paul






I guess perhaps, I just wrote about two traditions. What can I say, I teach math and can't count. We love the holidays. It's a time for slowing down and spending time with loved ones. It's a time for remembering Christ and His gift to us. So, while our traditions seem few, they are meaningful.

Merry Christmas to all!

1 comment:

Deborah said...

I loved this post! It made me feel as if I were at your table in the kitchen drinking coffee. Christmas at your house is always special, and I am so thankful that you are part of our Christmas. The advent wreath was absolutely the prettiest one I have ever seen!

I love you!