Christmas Traditions
In my house, the holidays are about
traditions—family, food, and especially decorating. To me, the Christmas
season begins when a certain items appear. On Thanksgiving day, I bring
out a wooden nativity that spins. My mother started the tradition when I
was growing up, and it took me 10 years to find one so I could continue
the practice.
Tradition 2, is
the setting up of the Christmas tree on the Friday after Thanksgiving.
That first night, we simply hang the lights on it. No ornaments, just
twinkling lights. There's magic in Christmas lights.
Tradition
3 is the displaying of my Department 56 ceramic villages. I started
collecting them when why children were young and I add a piece every
year. My son is really good about helping me as the collection is
rather, em, large.
Tradition four
takes place on the Sunday or Saturday following Thanksgiving. It's
putting up the rest of the decorations from hanging the outside lights,
to finishing the interior decorations, including the musical stuffed
animals, santas, christmas trees and my Hallmark holiday collections.
The children traditionally decorate the tree, so now that they're adults
we wait until they are home together. As the ornaments come out, we
share memories and I take pictures. One thing we did while they were
young was to buy ornaments each year, so that when they move out, they
would have memories and decorations to take with them. This will
probably be the last year my oldest will live with us, so the memories
will be tinged with just a bit of sadness.
Lastly,
in the weeks running up to Christmas are the baking season (or the
drafting of cookie slaves). I bake a little from Halloween to
Thanksgiving but my freezer eats them and so I have to start again. Over
the years, we've added to the traditional sugar and gingerbread
cookies, most noticeably those peanut butter blossoms and Nutella
cookies. Yum.
Traditions are
important. To be entered in a drawing for a electronic copy of either A
Gift from St. Nick or The Christmas Ship, leave a comment about your
family traditions.
In A Gift from St. Nick, the hero brings with him several Germanic tradition, one which is the celebration of St. Nicholas Day
Blurb:
Hans Lubeck lost his birthright to a woman's deceitful games. Ten years
later, he's on the cusp of fulfilling his dream of captaining his own
ship. And another woman could jeopardize everything.
Schoolteacher
Lenore Kerrigan devotes her time to her pupils and good works. She has
no use for a man or the damage he could do to her reputation.
But
this holiday season, fate and an island of matchmakers have other
plans. Will they accept the gift of a lifetime, or will the past steal
away any chance at happiness?
Good morning, Linda, and thanks so much for being my guest today. I loved your Christmas traditions and your book sounds terrific!
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for hosting me Penny. I love learning about other people's traditions.
ReplyDelete