Christmas traditions

Christmas is a season filled with all sorts of traditions. I thought about that this week as I finished cooking a batch of Horns – a date and nut filled pastry. Growing up we all knew that Christmas was getting close when we would come home to find that mom had just finished baking a batch of Horns. It is an ancient recipe brought to America by my maternal grandmother. I also marvel at the stamina of my mother with all she did in the kitchen during this season. Horns takes two days to make and they were just one of a number of special traditional goodies from that marvelous kitchen.

Some other traditions that my mother carried on was that Santa brought the Christmas tree. So the tree went up and decorated with tinsel hung one piece at a time … very time consuming – after I had gone to bed. The Christmas Cards were strung along a ribbon hung in the living room. Presents were sorted under the tree into piles for each of us kids. As turkey was the centerpiece of our Thanksgiving dinner so ham took center stage for our Christmas meal.

As Margaret and I established our own family we also established our own family traditions. The Christmas tree actually went up early in the season since we would hold an annual Christmas open house for our congregations and friends. Margaret developed a rather extensive list of cookie recipes and other favorite dishes. She would work hard the week before the open house cooking all the cookies to make sure everything was fresh.

It was in our first parsonage, with finances a little tight, that a simple Christmas season first appeared on our dinning room buffet. There little cardboard houses, bought at a local 5 & 10 store, with pine cones serving as trees and little lights taped to a coat hanger base and then covered in cotton sheets. A very cheap little plastic Santa and reindeers were hung over the little scene on a cloud of small blue bulbs. Over the years the shape has changed because of what was available for displaying the scene until we purchased a piano for Tracy. Well, when she moved into her own home and took the piano the Christmas scene went with her. It is now about 40 years old and everything, except the cotton sheet – it had gotten very yellow over the years – is from the original creation. It’s traditional.

Christmas tree moved from a real tree to an artificial one when we lived in Jacksonville thanks to a very generous member. The girls wouldn’t talk to me for several weeks because the tree wasn’t a real one. There were eight years that our home was large enough for 2 trees – the artificial one in the living room and the real tree in the family room. Now all three of us have pre-lit artificial trees … and no tinsel. Go figure.

Stockings are still filled with items under $3 a piece and they are all wrapped. The oldest child would place the angel on top of the tree after it was all decorated. Presents were unwrapped one at a time starting with the youngest to the oldest. The youngest child had the responsibility of passing out the presents to each person … still does. It will become Ava’s turn in the next couple of years after she gets past the desire to unwrap every present herself.

It was also a tradition to open one present Christmas Eve. A family in my last church have two boys – both grown now, but their traditional Christmas Eve special present were and is a new pair of PJ’s so that everyone will look “fresh” Christmas morning.

For a couple of years we took turns during the weeks leading up to Christmas of reading chapters from “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” … a great book and a real joy to read, especially out loud.

The items included in our Christmas morning breakfast always include sausage balls, various special breads (Cranberry, pumpkin and/or banana nut), cinnamon rolls, fruit, coffee, eggnog and a breakfast casserole … most of these items were leftovers from the open house. Now they are all made fresh for Christmas morning.

The house roof is outlined with Christmas lights a tradition that was started in our first parsonage when Margaret’s parents gave us their set of outside lights since they were not using them. It created quite a stir in that small Georgia town. People would slow down while passing our house that sat on the main drag heading out of town. Conversations would come to a halt when I walked into any of the town’s stores. Then I noticed that no other house in the town had any outside Christmas lights decorations. It was then that our close friend and church leader informed us that there was only one house in all of Carroll Country that had outside Christmas lights and they were on the house all year long … and you could buy anything you wanted at THAT house … anything!!! People were wondering just what kind of preacher the Methodist church had. Well, the lights stayed up and were turned on ever evening. The following year other homes in Temple, GA joined in the fun … and an old tradition was broken.

Celebrate your traditions … share the histories … see what new traditions can be started. Someone has suggested that one new tradition should be added for every special occasion – marriage, birth of a child or grandchild, purchase of a new home, change of jobs, move to a new community … something to mark the occasion and to celebrate the event to be remembered for years to come.

Quote for today: “Traditions are the guideposts driven deep in our subconscious minds. The most powerful ones are those we can't even describe, aren't even aware of.” ~source unknown