Building Family Traditions

Sometime near or on December first, our family gets the house ready for Christmas. It has become known as “Tree Day” and it is one of the highlights of our year.

It isn’t anything fancy, really. We go out and buy a fresh tree. Sometimes, we don’t even all go and pick it out together. Most times, my husband goes out, by himself, and with very little pomp and circumstance, brings home a tree. Nothing remarkable about that.

Then we pull out our ornaments and put them on the tree. Now, some families have an ornament for every year that each child has lived, and special ones from special relatives, and memory ornaments of people who have passed on, and some have the crafty ones the kids made when they were little.

We don’t have those.

We have fairly normal, basic, gold and cream ornaments and some ribbon that we wind around the branches. Nothing remarkable about that.

While we are doing the tree, we are listening to Christmas music and eating ‘Christmas foods’. The foods are typically snacky appetizer types that we graze on while we decorate. Chips. Salsa. Cheese. Crackers. Nothing particularly remarkable about that either.

But you know what? This year, my 9 year old said, “I think I like this day almost better than Christmas morning.”

Now that’s remarkable. Why do you think that is?


Please read the rest of my latest Heart of the Matter article here.