Now that it's the holiday season, my mind starts to reflect on my family traditions...like my sister sending me an advent calendar every year for the past twenty years. My husband brought home the mail yesterday and sure enough, there was a large manila envelope in the pile from my sister and inside a brand new advent calendar to start off the countdown to Christmas. I"ll faithfully open one window a day all month, just like I did with the calendars my mom bought me when I was a little girl and I"ll still get excited to see what little drawing will appear behind that window...
Tuesday night found me curled on the couch with my two cats watching Rudolph. When my three sons, Yule, Johann, and Finn were little boys, they'd jump into their red pajamas and curl up around me to watch the show. Now they are almost grown men, off in Hawaii or college or an apartment of their own, so I watched alone, singing the songs and reciting the lines that I know by heart. I couldn't not watch, as it's part of the family tradition...
Soon, it'll be time to find a tree and decorate it with the hundreds of ornaments that are packed in boxes in the closet under the stairs; Christmas music on the stereo and a rum spiked eggnog will round out that tradition...
And once Christmas is over and it's several days past New Year's, I'll slowly pack away all those ornaments again and then pick off several small branches of the tree and stuff them into the corners of the boxes, as that is a tradition, too. My grandmama used to do it, my mother has always done it, and I also stash a sprig or two of each year's tree in every box to mingle with those of Christmas' past.
These little acts tie my family together and I hope my boys remember and keep the traditions going as they move on and have families and Christmas celebrations of their own.
No comments:
Post a Comment