Like many others, my family and I have our family traditions that we do year after year after year. Since it is October, it is the time to visit the apple orchards. If we didn’t live where we do, we would want to live where these apple orchards are. Every year we go to the same shops, to the same place to watch them make cider, to the same petting zoo, the same restaurant for pie and to the same places for our picnic lunch. I don’t know why, but doing these same things every year gives us a sense of the season. If you skip doing the tradition, it doesn’t seem like that holiday. Even as an adult, I look forward to the holiday traditions.
Now that isn’t to say that you can’t change them up once in a while. For instance, I used to love to have people over for Christmas Eve dinner. I did this many, many years in a row. Then I became a lector at my church and suddenly I had to be at church on Christmas Eve. Since Mass was at 7 pm, I cooked up dinner prior to going and we ate when we got back. However, serving, eating and cleaning up a large meal at 9 o’clock at night was getting to hard to do. Maybe my age is showing, but I just didn’t have the energy to do it any more. Since going to Mass on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas morning became a tradition and cooking a large dinner wasn’t, we were at a loss as to what to do.
Some years we go to a friend’s house for a late dinner, which is wonderful, but we needed something that we could do as a family. Since we usually go visiting on Christmas Day, I found myself in the position of not being able to cook for the holidays. So I came up with the idea of a Dickens Tea on Christmas Eve afternoon, prior to heading off to Mass. This has worked out so nicely. We do it as just a family, so there isn’t the stress of getting the house company ready. The menu is fairly simple, but the same every year. Since we eat around 3 or 4, we are nice and full for church, but not so full that we cannot enjoy a small meal afterwards with our friends. Of course, on the way home we have the usual driving around looking at lights, however, in our neck of the woods, there isn’t much to see.
So once home, we all get into our jammies, grab a cup of hot cocoa and settle in to watch Charles Dickens a Christmas Carol. By the end we are all snuggly on the couch and sleepy. Our daughter heads off to bed and my husband fetches the gifts I have hidden out in the shed or car or one of my other many hiding places and we get to work playing Santa. With only a 13 yo at home now, I do miss the days of the surprise in the morning at what Santa left. But as one phase or tradition fades, others take their place. So as the holidays approach, enjoy your family traditions or make a new one. It is so enjoyable for the whole family.
