Maintaining Christmas Traditions
Change is impossible to avoid in military life. It’s constant in our life, but our family tries maintaining Christmas traditions, especially during the holidays.
Our traditions are simple, but our kids make sure that we always remember them. We look forward to them, and I think it provides some continuity in our ever-changing life and world.
Here are some of my family’s holiday traditions:
1. New pajamas and a book on Christmas Eve
Our kids get to open one present on Christmas Eve, and it’s always new pajamas and a book. They know what’s in the present, but they look forward to this every year.
2. Homemade Christmas decorations
We have several homemade Christmas decorations, some we made at home and some the kids made at school. In fact, we haven’t actually bought many Christmas decorations in our life. We use the homemade stuff to decorate for Christmas at our house and we prefer them. My house is not a magazine cover, but I love it.
3. Reading The Night Before Christmas and A Soldier’s Night Before Christmas on Christmas Eve.
My husband reads these books to our kids every Christmas Eve. Yes, he’s been deployed for Christmas several times during their lives. But, we have voice recordings of him reading these books, and we play those when he isn’t home so that the tradition can still continue. If you haven’t seen A Soldier’s Night Before Christmas, definitely check it out.
4. The kids decorate our Christmas tree
Like I said, my house is not a magazine cover, so it doesn’t look perfect, ever, but we love it that way. My husband and I always let our kids decide where the ornaments go on the tree. When they were little, all the ornaments were on the bottom, but now that they’re older, they spend more time spreading the ornaments out on the tree. They love decorating it and work together very well on this every year.
5. Homemade Christmas gifts
We love making homemade Christmas gifts at our house, and we make them for family, friends, and teachers. While the tradition evolved over the year thanks to Pinterest, my kids love doing this and I think the homemade things make the best gifts. The kids take great pride in making these gifts and I love watching them pick out what to make. We have spent a lot of time laughing and smiling while making these homemade gifts also.
We may be living in a different place, in a different house, or Dad may be gone, but we try to maintain these Christmas traditions. Our kids look forward to these traditions and so do we.
What traditions does your family look forward to every year?
