Christmas Traditions

I really enjoy this Nativity painting as it seems so personal of Mary and Joseph enjoying baby Jesus. I love Christmas. It has such a unique spirit of love that it brings. We are hoping that through our family traditions our kids will feel that same spirit. Today we started reading from one of 4 Christmas books/binders we have--3 were given to us. Each has a daily something in December to enjoy the Christmas spirit. This year we are using one that has a scripture from the New Testament and a Christmas Carol or Song to sing that day AND a story pertaining to Christmas. The stories are long so we won't be reading them everyday but on occasion which is fine so the older kids don't get too bored of hearing the same stories every year we use it! We are going to start a new tradition this year that I heard about from another blogger Pikes Pickles. She shared that last year they had to earn the decorations for their tree by being nice to each other--you notice the good others do and then you get to put up the decorations. Luckily I remembered this year before we got the tree up so we are also starting that tradition. AND part of that is that if we aren't nice to each other we take some off! So if you come by our house and wonder why our tree is only part way decorated or not at all you'll know things haven't been going so well! Other traditions we plan to do are on Christmas Eve we act out the Nativity as we read it and we eat on the floor simple foods like summer sausage, cheeses, crackers, crusty bread, nuts, fruit and juice. We started that tradition last year and the kids already asked if we were going to do that again because they really liked it! We are doing our extended family white elephant gift exchange and gingerbread houses. Christmas choir concerts and dance concerts. We may throw in a play or two and we always watch lots of Christmas shows in between it all! We are trying to do some service for others also but we haven't decided yet what we'll do this year. May you and your family enjoy the love and simple joys of the season!