Christmas is...

What is Christmas to you?  

Every family has their own traditions and values, and every child leaves their family with those traditions and values held firmly in their grasp.  When a couple are married they begin the monumental task of combining these traditions into a conceivable whole.  I warn you, don't take this lightly!!

Joining two families is hard, maybe the hardest thing I've undertaken to date.  What makes it so hard is I can't do it alone. No one can. It takes at least two (and preferably help from others) to meld two very different units.  I don't mean that every individual in one family needs to combine with the other. What I mean is: we are our families.  And as husband and wife, we must toss the bad, examine the good and fit the puzzle pieces together until we have family values and traditions that we both can get behind, believe in, and feel sure in teaching to our children.

With it being the Christmas season, this was brought to the fore front for us.  We grew up in the same town, and so both our families live in this area; this creates a problem.  Who do we spend Christmas with? Both families? One over the other? But then what if someone's feelings are hurt? Well do we do two Christmases? When should those happen? ...and so on.

By default, as we made these decisions; my husband and I began to discover which traditions mattered most to each of us, and friction ensued.  For example:
     I was raised by a single mom. She spent all Christmas Eve wrapping presents and stuffing stockings, so when Christmas day came, no way was she going to spend half the day fixing a fancy meal. (she also put our stockings by our beds so when we kids woke up we would be occupied with our stockings for an hour or so and let her sleep longer; another tradition)  For this reason, my family has the tradition of not eating meals on Christmas day.  We snack all day on chocolate, oranges, crackers and cheese.  Because we aren't spending time preparing meals or cleaning up after them, we have a lot of open time to play games together and examine the gifts we've received or others have received.  Rarely do we change out of our pajamas.
     My husband's family is very different.  They hang their stockings around the living room.  Every one gets up early and the first person up fixes everyone drinks (tea and coffee, not cocktails).  They open stockings together. Next are the presents under the tree, after a break for getting more tea.  After all the presents have been opened (oh that's something different as well; my family strews the wrapping paper, the Gerhardts place it neatly in paper bags) they take a hiatus where people go to enjoy their gifts and nap.  Around noon preparations begin for THE Christmas meal and this goes on for, like, ever (say this with 'valley-girl' accent).

So as you can see, our traditions are pretty different, and in juxtaposition to each other (that's an awesome word by the way).  Nathan and I are faced with the task of compromising. Fun stuff, right?  So here are a few of the things we have been able to agree upon to date, hopefully we can figure all this out before any kids come. Yikes! I just scared myself....

So anyways, for us Christmas is:

...reading a story together. Usually Tolkien, but this year it was Brian Jacques.

...oranges in stockings.

...scrapbook pages to commemorate the year.

...Christmas tree decorating together AND getting a new ornament in our stockings.

...playing at least one board game with a BUNCH of people.

Those are just the fun quirks we've turned into traditions.  But Christmas is more than traditions.  Christmas is the time Christians celebrate the birth of the most important person ever born. I'm talking, of course, about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.  At Christmas time we give gifts to remember that God gave the greatest gift, His only son, to live the perfect life and then day for the sins of the world.  A perfect being suffering for the crimes of another.  The perfect sacrifice.

Hope

Peace

Joy

Love

Christ

Oh and P.S.

Miss Mae

Nathan gifted me with an iPod this Christmas and so of course I am now on instagram! :) I love to take photos and so I am very excited about this.  It is also a good thing for you, my lovely readers, because it means more awesome photos (an iPod is more convenient than a 7D) and therefore more stellar blog posts!