I thought I would take a few minutes to record some of the traditions that we again enjoyed this year. Some are common, but I think some are a bit unique. They are all special to us.
We always enjoy visiting our family in the Cincinnati area around Christmas time. My uncle and aunt and my brother and his family met us at my mom and step-dad's house. We had a very nice time and a superb dinner. Here is a picture of my children and nieces with my mom:
Thanks, Mom, for the wonderful visit, food, and gifts!
We also had a great visit at my Dad's with him, my step-mom, and my aunt. Somehow, we forgot to get the camera out, though. Thanks to you all, also, for the wonderful visit, food and gifts! It was a special time that we will treasure. My aunt brought the peppermint ice-cream, which has become somewhat of a tradition at Christmas. This was the first Christmas without Grandma and Grandpa and they always enjoyed peppermint ice-cream for Christmas. We all missed them but are thankful for all the memories we created with them throughout the years!
We have a common tradition of putting up a Christmas tree, but we also put up a “Happy Birthday” banner near the tree every year on Christmas Eve and we usually do not put up the star until Christmas Eve. We traditionally bring out the children's presents from us on Christmas Eve after the children have gone to bed.
Here was our 2006 tree:
We use many ornaments that were passed down from my childhood, which makes it more special to me, as well as newer ones, too. The “Happy Birthday” banner is above the tree. We have always tried hard to remember that Christmas is really a celebration of Christ's birthday.
One of the things we have done for many years is celebrating the birthday of Jesus with a giant chocolate chip cookie decorated. Since we use cakes for everyone else in the family, we decided long ago to do something special and different for Jesus. Here was the 2006 cookie:
By the way, the candle in the picture is the candle I received for being a blogger of the week. It is a soy wax candle with Christmas Tree scent from Homestead Originals in a half-pint Mason jar. It is a neat candle. At the time of this picture I had burned it for about 9 hours already. I like how the wax disappears as it burns. Perhaps I will post more about the candle later, and let you know how it did, after I have used more of it up.
Another tradition of ours is to not bring the baby Jesus out for our Nativity Scene until Christmas Eve. We traditionally do various different things with our wise men also, although this year we put them all together with the shepherds. We have two Nativity Scene sets; one that I grew up with and also the one that belonged to Lisa's mom. This year we used the one Lisa grew up with. Here it is:
You can't make out all the figures very well in this picture because of the garland that I used for the straw, but it is a very nice set. The figures are large, (Joseph is about 7 inches tall), even though they look small in this picture. I guess part of the reason they look small is because you can not tell how huge the book is on top. The book on the top part of the table is a giant family Bible that belonged to my grandmother's, mother. I think it is the thickest book I have ever seen. I feel very blessed that she wanted me to have it.
The final tradition I would like to share about is our “Christmas on the Mountain” celebration we try to do every year. It started out just with my family on Christmas Eve, but we were having such a good time that we started to invite others to come. This year we did not get to do it until a few days after Christmas, which actually worked out better for some of the people who wanted to come. Members of three other families joined with us this year, so with my six there were 15 of us all together.
We hike up into the holler carrying lanterns for light, making stops along the way to read parts of the Christmas story and light fireworks and sing carols to accentuate certain parts of the story. Whenever an angel appears in the story, I have a firework go off to coincide with the angel's appearing.
We stop and reflect on Mary's part and have a firework go off when Gabriel appears to her. This year Lisa and Erica sang part of “Mary Did You Know” at this stop.
Then we walk a bit further and stop to reflect about the angel coming to Joseph in a dream, with a firework. We then read about the taxation and go along with Mary and Joseph on the long road to Bethlehem, and sing “O Little Town of Bethlehem”. The road was a bit muddy this year…
My favorite stop is with the shepherds. They always get more than one firework because a heavenly host of angels appeared to them! We generally sing “Hark the Herald, Angels Sing” there.
We move along with the shepherds to see the thing that was told them and stop at our barn, where we find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger, and of course sing “Away In A Manger”. This was the first year we had some authentic barn smells to go along with the story! (Even though they would not have had pigs there.)
We had a special surprise this year in the barn. Some of our party had slipped out ahead of us and assumed the rolls of Mary and Joseph:
(By the way, the baby is lying in our first feed trough we were using for our pigs. We have made a much larger one now. Perhaps I will show it in a future post.)
The shepherds then leave the manger rejoicing to tell abroad what they had seen and heard. This is when we always sing “Go Tell It On the Mountain” and then proceed to further climb up the mountain with the good news.
We usually stop a bit further and demonstrate the star the wise men followed with a firework, read their part of the story and sing “Beautiful Star of Bethlehem” and “We Three Kings”.
Pictures of fireworks do not usually turn out very well for us, but here are a couple of examples:
When we finally reach the clearing, we have two big and hot fires going (that we started earlier in the day), one to sit around and roast marshmallows with and the other to have hot chocolate on. We usually have other snacks there, too, sing more Christmas carols, and light off many more fire works and sparklers.
Looking at the pictures, I see that none of them turned out very well, but maybe you can still get a feeling for it. Here we are at the clearing:
We had a blessed time, even if it was after most people had stopped thinking about the Christmas story. The truths of Christmas are really things we should keep with us all year, anyway, and not just on the 25th of December.
I think it is important to have some traditions that we can look forward to together as a family. We actually have several more things that we traditionally do as a family this time of year, but I have shared what I wanted to for this post. If I include much else, then I will not get this entry up for many more days, and I don't want to wait any longer! I have missed blogging these past few weeks and I have several more things I would like to record soon. Hopefully time will start to become more available to me, but lately I have been kept pretty busy!
God Bless, everyone, and have a Happy and Godly New Year!
1 comment
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Jessica on January 7, 2007 at 3:46 pm
Hello Uncle Eric and Family! It looks like you all had a Wonderful Christmas! I love all the traditions you do! (Plus the Great pictures you added!) Thank you for sharing how you celebrate Christ's birth! I hope you all have a great year in 2007!
Love,
Jessica
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