Wednesday, November 12, 2008

WFMW--Holiday Traditions

My edition of Works for Me Wednesday is backwards for today.  

With Thanksgiving and Christmas just around the corner, I've been thinking constantly about traditions.  Jeff and I both bring different traditions to the table, and now that we have two little ones around, we want to be able to incorporate some of those into our family, as well as some new ones, too.  I love to hear about how others celebrate in/with their families, and am hoping to glean some ideas for things that we can incorporate into our own family as our boys grow.  We are anticipating a very exciting Christmas this year with Jak turning two, and being able to understand things a *bit* better, and although he won't fully understand much of it yet, nor will he remember it, we'd like to start to try to be intentional about how we do things for various holidays.
 
Some thoughts to get you started are:
 
-New Year's Eve/Day--any special things to do with your kids; ex:  a goal jar to be opened at the end of that new year, to see if any/all goals were accomplished
 
-Valentine's Day--is this a fun holiday for you or just a "Hallmark" holiday that passes by?  If it's fun, why?
 
St. Patrick's Day
 
Easter--Resurrection Eggs? Easter Bunny? Easter Baskets?  Easter Egg Hunt?
 
Memorial Day/Veteran's Day
 
4th of July
 
Mother's Day/Father's Day/Grandparent's Day
 
1st Day of School/Fall--Apple Picking?  Pumpkin Patch?  Harvest Party?
 
Halloween--do you do it?  Why or why not?
 
Thanksgiving--Soup Kitchen?  Giving an entire meal to a needy family? 
 
Christmas--the big one:  Santa or not, and WHY or WHY NOT (this is a big one for me!)?  Advent Calendar?  Advent Wreath?  Jesse Tree?  Stockings?  Cutting your own Tree?  Open presents on Christmas Eve or not?  Cookies?  Gingerbread Houses?  Driving to look at lights?  Caroling?  Trimming the Tree?  Soup Kitchen?  Angel Tree or Operation Shoebox at church?
 
Please feel free to add any other holidays or traditions that I might have missed or don’t know about!  And if it applies, please tell me how you incorporate your Faith into the tradition.
 
I am so eager to hear your responses.  I truly look forward to reading them all, and possibly incorporating them into our bag of traditions!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have some great ideas for you, but I have no time to write them. I did post some on my blog, but I will have to come back tomorrow and give you some more. ;o)

jen aka mommay said...

Come visit my blog for our latest tradition: Elf on the Shelf.

We also open a present on Christmas eve (pajamas) every year. And the next morning, we take a pic of the family in our pj's and put them in "Our Christmas Memories Book" and we stay in pj's all day long!

Sherry @ Lamp Unto My Feet said...

We started a Thanksgiving traditions this year with making a Thanksgiving tree. We have cut outs of leaves and are going to paste them to a bare tree on poster board after putting something that we are thankful for on each leaf and shared it. We write one leaf out a day.

For CHRISTmas, we make cookies a few weeks before. We also do a secret elf to several neighbors along with a note and CHRISTmas goodies. CHRISTmas eve the kids put on a production completely on their own with sung and played songs, reading of Luke 2, etc.

Jen M. said...

I don't know why, but we always go out for Chinese on New Years Day.