Christmas Traditions

I love traditions, especially Christmas traditions! Opening the stockings (picture above of our stockings at my mom's) after we have opened all of our other gifts has been the tradition of my family. When I celebrated Christmas with David's family for the first time, I learned that they opened their stockings first. So, as David and I have been begun celebrating Christmas with our children, we have been trying to come up with our own traditions that are different from some of the things we did growing up. One of the things we have decided to do is pick a gift from the Heifer International catalog and give a gift on Christmas day. We hope when our children are older that they will learn to appreciate all we have been given and that this tradition will teach them to give back after we have been given so much.

I have enjoyed reading different traditions lately and I came across this one that I would like to share. It came from the November issue of the Family Fun magazine. The McCollum family said they decided on Chrsitams to "focus on what they could give others, rather than on buying gifts themselves." They "decided to be "elves" for the 12 days of Christmas and anonymously would do nice things for 12 people who had touched [their] lives in some way." They did things like sending an ice cream gift card to a friend whose parents were going through a divorce and gave cookies to a family who had just lost their mom to cancer. I may keep this idea and when our children are old enough, have them do this.

I would love to hear any of your tradtions!