Christmas Traditions (Remember, you started it)

Written by Claire Colvin

Did you have Christmas traditions when you were a kid? We had a few.  They didn’t start with “everyone sitting by the fireside …” but they were ours and I loved them.  My Dad used to hide six red robins in the living room and my brothers and I (well usually just my younger brother and I) would huddle together on the couch trying to find them all.   We always made sugar cookies and when it came to decorating the tree EVERY ornament had to find a place somewhere.

There’s something very comforting in the familiar sights and sounds of Christmas.  There’s that moment of recognition, of thinking, “I know how this goes, I know what comes next.”  It reminds me of the country dancing you see in those old Jane Austen movies.  Everyone knows the steps and so everyone in the room participates.  There is an inherent togetherness in tradition.

As I’ve grown up part of the process has been choosing my own traditions

and deciding how I want to celebrate.  It started in university, the first year I participated in Operation Christmas Child.   Filling a gift box for a child on the other side of the planet is a wonderful way to start the season.  Each year as I keep filling boxes, I remember the student I was.  Even with little money to speak of it wasn’t so hard to find a little extra.  I try to remember that now as I bustle through the other expenses of the season.  Sometimes generosity hardly costs a thing.

One Christmas, my parents bought all three of us Nerf dart guns.  My oldest brother was almost out of the house and my Mom said she just wanted to see us all playing together like we did when we were kids.  There’s nothing refined about three almost-adults chasing each other through the halls with foam darts.   But the laughter that rang out through the house that day, and that lives still in my memory was very Christmassy indeed.

If you’re looking to start a tradition of your own this year, check out Lily Green’s wonderful article, “My Christmas Tradition”.  Often it’s not the fanciest or priciest traditions we hold dearest, but rather the ones that bring us together and remind us of the ones we love.  How will you celebrate this year?