Family Traditions

My daughter will be home for the Thanksgiving holiday (yippee!!). While she's here, she'll be working on a project for her speech class. She's doing a presentation on family traditions, and hers will be about the tradition of decorating the home the day after Thanksgiving. This is exciting, because it never occurred to me to take pictures of the house being transformed from everyday mundane to Christmas delight. This will have to be scrapbooked, for sure.

When the two older children were small, we'd go to my in-laws for Thanksgiving dinner. I'd be up bright and early in the morning preparing ham, pea soup, rice, baking cakes, whatever it was my turn to bring. Thanksgiving dinner has always been after 6:00pm at my husband's family, so we'd stay until 11:00pm so we could put the kids to bed. That's when the fun would start.

Once the two were snug in bed (which was pretty easy, since they typically fell asleep in the car), I would begin the decorating. I would usually be up till after 1:00am setting up the tree, which was artificial at the time, getting the train around the tree, garland all over, and of course their stockings, which would have some type of treat like a children's Christmas tape (before the popularity of CD's). It was exciting for me to hear my son get up, go downstairs, then come running up to get his little sister. "Come quick, you gotta see this!!", he'd exclaim, and the two of them would run downstairs to the magic of Christmas.

When I began selling Christmas decorations through House of Lloyd's Christmas Around the World, I started a nice little collection of music boxes, nativities, stuffed toys, table settings, villages, and Santas, to the point that now it takes us 2 - 3 days to set everything up. My kids are now 21 yo, 18 yo and 8 yo, so they help with the decorating rather than Mom doing it all in one night. Still, it has become a fun (though long and tiring) tradition, with Christmas music in the background as we bring everything down from the attic, fill music boxes with batteries, and convert our home into our own Christmas wonderland. To be able to see it in pictures throughout the year will be extra special.

I can't wait to get started!! I think God is going to be teaching me something important during this family tradition time. Every day is an opportunity to learn; I plan to be alert and listening to what God has to say to me this year.