Christmas Traditions
Hey Friends. I hope this BLOG Posting finds you happy and healthy in life. I have been thinking about traditions we, the Carden Family, have in place and why we have them and cherish them so much. So, I put that to you, my readers (or reader) to share with myself and others. I will share a few of our family traditions and then open things up to all of you to share yours with me.
TRADITION #1
Christmas decorations are not to be installed on the inside of the home until the day after Thanksgiving. I think it is totally wrong that anyone would put up anything related to Christmas until after Thanksgiving is over. Finish one holiday people before you start a new one.
To add more to this. In our family, both now and growing up, we would put up our tree, lights and decorate the inside and outside of our families home starting the day after Thanksgiving and continuing through until Sunday. This was something we always did and I continue to make certain we keep doing. It is a special weekend for us as we are all excited to decorate all we have to show our holiday spirit.
TRADITION #2
The Advent Calendar. This is something that I had every year as a kid and my sister and I loved it. It marks each day of the month of December with a drawer, door or shelf of some kind. Most of them have small trinkets or treats like candy in them for the person who opened the door. The really special ones had scripture versus as well as space for a treat. My sister and I would get to open a door on ours each day, read the scripture verse and then we would get to eat the candy.
Of course, as a kid, you just want the candy and having to read GOD’s word is just the hoop you had to jump through to get that bit of candy. Not really the reason for the season. However, now that I am 37 years old, I have felt a fondness for that style of calendar and I miss those verses. It really pounds the message home for those of us who believe in Christ Jesus.
TRADITION #3
Christmas Lights. This is a huge issue for me. I am about to step up onto my soap box and preach it to you all on how this MUST be done.
1. Lights need to be strategically placed on your property. What I mean by this is invest a little time into your plan of where and how you are hanging your lights. Don’t be like the people who leave their lights up all year long. Or the ones that just kind of half ass their effort. Do it right or don’t do it at all.
2. Your lights on your house need to be hung straight. Strings should be straight and tight on the gutters, fences and roof lines. All lights should be facing the same directions on those lines. Don’t have them facing one up and one down. All of them need to be UP or DOWN.
3. Blink or not to Blink your lights. I really don’t care at all one way or the other. But for the love of all that is holy and right, please have your flashing lights together and your non-flashing lights together. Don’t be that house that has one strand on your house that is blinking and the rest of the lights are not. That is the ultimate sign of not caring at all. Put your blinking lights together on shrubs, doors, fences and such but keep them together.
TRADITION #4
Socks. Maybe your family does socks and maybe they don’t. That is your call. Our family does socks and we fill them for everyone on Christmas Eve after the kids have gone to bed. When we wake up in the morning the socks are the first thing we open while we wait for everyone to arrive for the festivities of the day. This keeps the kids entertained and keeps the excitement building towards the opening of the gifts.
Our socks have our names stitched into them at Grandma’s house and at our house we have socks with our favorite Characters on them. Mine is Chilly Willy, My wifes is Pooh Bear, Child #1 is Princesses, Child #2 is Tinker Bell and Child #3 is Mickey Mouse.
So, there are a few of our family traditions. You may have some of your own that differ from ours. I want to know what your family does for traditional Christmas decorations, gift opening, meals, travel etc. Please share them with me as I may adopt them for our own.
SHORTFATWHITEGUY 
Hey Scott. I appreciate a well-developed appreciation of Christmas traditions. I offer a few layers of added meaning to one of my favorite, and your #1- the Christmas tree/decorations. The tree has always been my favorite tradition of Christmas, and so in seminary I wrote a research paper on the theological and historical background on the Christmas tree. Here are some interesting thoughts that can bring deeper meaning to the strange practice of setting up a tree in your living room and covering it with stuff:
Deeper meaning behind:
1) The Paradise tree: In the middle ages, a Christmas celebration called the Paradise Play would feature a tree decorated in ornaments- representing the tree of the knowledge of good and evil around which the story of Adam and Eve, and their fall from grace woudl be acted out. (until the plays became a bit too raunchy for the church and the play and the tree were outlawed by- leading to many families continuing the tradition in the privacy of their own homes/ hovels). The tradition of remembering the fall of mankind and its need for salvation is still told with the tree and red apples hanging on it (the apples representing the forbidden fruit and the fall from grace- most apple ornaments have morphed into red balls). Along with apples, the trees were also bedecked with wafers (and later cookies, eventually in the shape of bishops which eventually lost their miter hats and became ordinary gingerbread men, or other fun ornaments) to remind us of the saving grace of God experienced in the body of Christ in the elements of communion. Red ribbon or garland represents the atoning blood of Christ
2# Red and Green -the colors of Christams represent the gospel of atonement: red is both the color of sin, suffering and Death, and the color of the blood of Christ and its atoning of the sins of hte world- leading to eternal life- represnted by the evergreen.
#3: The burning bush: Everyone knows the story of God speaking to Moses from the burning bush, but the image of the bush is a visual of “God-with-us”. A bush enveloped in bright flame but not being consumed is the image of the perfect God in the midst of an impure people, and the people are not destroyed. That’s the gospel message -salvation by grace through faith. A tree decked out in lights is the image of the burning bush- God with us.
#4: Silver and Gold: This one is pretty obvious, it represnts the gift of the Magi- not just money, but recognizing that Jesus is Lord and the offering of our resources to Him as our boss. We hang silver and gold to state that Jesus is king.
This is way too long so Ill end there. Great ways to bring out some deeper meaning from the traditions we love.
First, a couple reactions/reflections on your traditions.
They are cool.
#1) Do you have a lot of cool THanksgiving decorations? My thought on this has always been that most, if not all, other holidays fail in comparison with Christmas, so why give them their equal share when they aren’t equal? I don’t find many people willing to get on board with this idea though and usually we wait til after thanksgiving, but I was able to get us to decorate the weekend before turkey day this year since we were out of town that weekend.
#2) That’s awesome! We had an advent calendar growing up and have one for Shiloh now, but it just has candy. But I think I’m stealing your idea and adding scripture verses to it too!
#3) Another area I find myself in the minority on, but whenever we go look at Christmas lights on houses I always find that I’m the one in the car who likes the houses that no one else likes because I like the ones that look like people had fun with it rather than they tried to increase their curb appeal or make some kind of house fashion statement with the lights.
#4) Those sound like great stockings.
Our traditions:
* We have our tree and lots of ornaments (too many). It’s much more fun now that our daughter is old enough to hang them with us, so the front lower portion of the tree is heavily decorated compared to the rest of it.
Our tree is an artificial one. We actually greatly prefer real ones, but when we she was a crawling eight month old we didn’t want to deal with needles she could swallow. It’s nice for convenience and it’s pre-lit. We miss the smell. We actually had a tradition for years where my wife and I would walk up to Fred Meyer, buy a tree, and walk it back to our apartment. The last year she was pregnant and couldn’t do it, so she drove and I put the tree in a shopping cart and pushed it home – only to be encountered with 40 mph winds on the way home that turned my tree-cart into a sailboat on wheels. Now we stick with the fake tree because I’m still trying to get the best value in dollars per year of using it.
The string of lights we used to put on the tree when it wasn’t pre-lit now goes around the top of the walls in my daughter’s bedroom. We have had a much longer string of lights that we have always put around the top of the walls in the living room/dining room/hallway for years. We don’t do outside lights in an apartment building, but this is our version of it. And the pushpins we hold them up with also then get to have extra ornaments hung on them since we have too many for the tree.
We have lots of other decorations. We hsve these three cool felt wisemen that we hang in the wall that my parents had in our house growing up for years. Lots of candles and nativity scenes and other decorations.
We have stockings. They are pretty plain, but we’re okay with that. They get filled Christmas Eve and opened the next day. Usually lots of candy and small items and an orange at the bottom to fill out the toe.
We listen to lots of Christmas music. And we start on November FIRST. And no, I don’t see any problem because my selection of ‘thanksgiving songs’ is pretty small.
We open one present each on Christmas eve and they are always pajamas which we wear that night (and the next morning).
Matt –
Thanks for the comment. Here are my random comment replies.
I love the Pajamas for your Christmas Eve Gift. That is an awesome idea. I think we may adopt that one for our family.
Our Socks, when I was a kid, had an orange in the toe for the same reason. Our current socks don’t need anything in their toes. Ours are also filled with an assortment of candy, gum, hair ties/bands, color books and small toys. Usually from the dollar store.
The Advent Calendar is something My mom started with Robin and I when we were kids. The scriptures were printed on the doors we opened. I think she bought them at the Christian Book store.
We also have an artificial tree. Different reasoning for it though. Ours is because Andie J and I have bad allergies to live trees in the house.