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Christmas Traditions
I just finished wrapping two of my favorite Christmas gifts for Guillermo and Maya: A Christmas ornament for each of them.
I know they’ll like the ornaments, but I also know they will quickly forget them after they unwrap other presents and find toys.
I don’t mind. I’m passing on a family tradition.
Ever since my sister and I were young, my parents gave us one ornament every Christmas. When we finished college and settled into our own homes, they gave us our set of ornaments so we could decorate our own tree.
The gesture itself was nice enough, but what made the ornaments even more special was the time that my parents, especially my mother, spent picking them out each year. Many times, the ornaments, which nearly always were from Hallmark, represented something we had going on in our lives that year.
I have an ornament of a beaver playing soccer for all the years I played that sport and a Santa playing softball for the all the years I played that sport. The year I graduated from college, I received an ornament of two mice decorating a sombrero because my major was Spanish. Five years ago, when I was pregnant with Guillermo, my parents gave me an ornament of a very pregnant and very happy looking woman.
When I married my husband eight years ago, I strongly encourage that he and I continue the tradition with each other. Every year he asks to be reminded of the ornament-buying rules, but he always comes through. My favorite is the “Sweet Home” ornament he gave me the year we bought our first house, the one we live in now. That year, I gave him a Santa dressed in Carolina blue to celebrate his new job.
The tradition was one I enthusiastically passed on to my kids. Guillermo’s collection includes a Thomas the Tank Engine ornament and a Spiderman ornament. This year, he’s getting an ornament of Superman shooting out of a comic book because this is the year my husband introduced him to comic books.
Maya’s collection is smaller, but she’ll love the Dora ornament we’re giving her this year.
I know the ornaments won’t be the highlight of my children’s Christmas. They weren’t the highlight of mine either when I was young.
Looking back on it, however, I remember only a few gifts I received during my childhood, like the Cabbage Patch Kid one year or a bicycle another.
Those things are long gone, of course. What I do have that will last forever is my box full of ornaments, my box full of memories, that light up my Christmas tree at this magical time each year.
What are your Christmas traditions?
Natalie appears Sundays on TriangleMom2Mom. Read more about Natalie at her blog A Day at the Park.
Natalie Gott
Natalie is a TriangleMom2Mom featured blogger, appearing every Sunday.
Natalie is a stay-at-home mom in Carrboro to castle- and super hero-loving Guillermo, 5, and puzzle- and big brother-adoring Maya, 2. Natalie was a wire service reporter for nine years, but stopped working after Maya was born in 2006. Most mornings you can now find her at the playgrounds chasing her kids, who frequently are wearing superhero capes. Natalie grew up in Iowa and Peoria, Ill. After college, she lived in St. Louis, Baton Rouge, La.,and Austin, Texas. In 2005, she and her husband moved to North Carolina and she proudly sings every word to the "It's Carrboro" rap. Natalie loves politics, reggae and grocery stores and readily admits she wastes too much time reading celebrity gossip, but just can't stop herself.
Comments
I do the same thing with ornaments. This year my daughter's getting an ornament from Alaska since we went there.
Right now, I'm loving watching my daughter decorate the tree on our advent calendar. There are 24 ornaments for each day - dec. 1 to 24. She gets so excited about it. It's the very first thing we do each morning ... then we count the number of days until Christmas, until we get the tree. She talks about it all day. So much fun.
We have done the same thing. It started with my grandmother putting an ornament (nothing fancy,might be a plastic guy with a head shaped like an orange) atop each of our Christmas packages. When my sister and I left to start our own lives, those ornaments became the basis for our Christmas trees.
I'm not going to say anything about the fact that we can't find that box right now and that my husband might have lost it when he was packing up the house in Florida to move here. There's nothing I can do about it. So whatever happens I'm going to accept it.
And make my husband pay for the rest of his life!