Christmas Traditions

Last week at the cinema I watched ‘Olaf’s Frozen Adventure’. It’s a short film where Olaf, in his usual comical style, is searching for a family tradition for Elsa and Anna. As I watched Olaf knocking on the doors of Arendelle to find out what tradition each family had, it made me consider what our family traditions are.

When I first got married, I found it a challenge meshing two lots of family traditions together. However, since having my Little Lady we have actually found our own way. Here are some of ours:

Making a gingerbread house is such a fun activity that usually involves eating plenty of sweets. I should fess up that we don’t exactly make the gingerbread house. We use a kit and decorate it. We have tried kits from various supermarkets but the best by far is from Lidl. (They sell out quickly!) The gingerbread is glossy and the sweets are juicy and it makes a particularly impressive house. We have Christmas music playing and take our time. The gingerbread house is then a brilliant decoration or table centre piece until we crack it open and eat it on Boxing Day.

When I asked some children at my school about their Christmas traditions many had a tradition linked to putting up their Christmas tree, often on December 1^st. Our family is no exception in having a tree tradition.  We have a real tree. This is something that I really struggled with in meshing our family traditions together. I come from an artificial tree family and my husband comes from a real tree family. I particularly struggled with the yearly expense of the real tree and grumbled and groaned but my husband insisted and eventually, I have come round to the idea. In fact, I’ve embraced it. For the last two years we have headed off to a farm shop off the M54 with our axe and saw to pick our own Christmas tree. It’s been so much fun. They take you out to the tree field on their tractor and trailer, drop you off and you then cut down your own tree before hitching a ride back. It’s a welly boots, hats, scarves and gloves day usually followed by a coffee and cake in the farm shop café.

I believe it’s really important that my Little Lady knows the ‘reason for the season’. Christmas can so easily be such a busy commercial time that the reason we are celebrating gets lost. We have a fantastic Playmobil nativity set that we love to get out and act the story of Jesus’ birth and all his visitors. We also go to a crib service where Little Lady joins in to act out the nativity story - providing she approves of the costume. (Most churches have something similar.) Little Lady is hoping for the Mary role one year!

On Christmas eve we put out a mince pie and drink for Santa and carrots for the reindeers. We then cuddle up together and read The Night Before Christmas. It feels a magical moment and time to get excited that Santa is on his way. We have a look on the Santa tracker app and then put little Lady to bed, always hopeful that she will go to sleep easily.