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| "Simple Abundance" |
We've never missed a year going to a tree farm and cutting down our tree. One year we had snow on the ground. It was a "classic Christmas card scene". . . .
I'd have cookies and hot chocolate afterwards while everyone warmed up in the car before heading home to decorate the tree. . . .
Now that they are grown our celebration has had to change to accommodate who can come home for Christmas Eve or Christmas morning. And now that two of my sons have children I've told them I don't expect them to come home if they want to establish their own traditions for their family.
One of the things I love about the season is the music. In the 1970s I was part of a madrigal group one year. We sang at the Arts Club of Washington, DC and several other places. I enjoy shopping for and finding the perfect Christmas card to send. Some years I've added my own story or poem or just sent the proverbial newsletter. I love turning on a Christmas movie while I'm addressing envelopes. The year Gabriel came to live with us I featured him in our card. Here is a montage of what it took get the center photo for the card. . . .
It's fun to decorate the house for winter and add Christmas colors and objects for the month of December. It's different each year. This is how I decorated in 2012. That same year we spent a weekend in "Christmas City USA" otherwise known as Bethlehem, PA. We always try to make our town's Holiday House Tour or visit other places like Old Bedford Village during the Christmas season.
Christmas Eve has been celebrated the same for many years now by having fondue. . . .
That year we actually got snow on Christmas Eve--a special treat for our guest from Mexico. . . .
Whether it's having a fire in fireplace. . . .
Trekking out to the Nativity in the woods to sing Christmas carols. . . .
Baking cookies to share. . . .
Or picking out and sending gifts to family and "adopting" a needy family through a local charity, Christmas and all the ways to celebrate it are what the season is all about for me.
Sarah Ban Breathnach shares her Joyful Simplicities for December in "Simple Abundance". Here are a few of them. . . .
🌲 Really deck the halls. Spread holiday cheer throughout your entire home with seasonal decorations, no matter what holiday you celebrate. Evergreens, beautiful flowering plants, candles, tiny lights, and natural decorations. . . .
🌲 Dip into the simply abundant treasury of seasonal stories....My favorite anthology is "A Christmas Treasury," edited by Jack Newcombe.
🌲 Hold a Christmas classic-film fest.
🌲 Fulfill the holiday dreams of a child who isn't yours.
🌲 Share your blessings with a shelter for women or the homeless.
🌲 Prepare a Nativity Tray.*
*Sarah says in her December 24th entry in "Simple Abundance" that the Nativity Tray is an English medieval custom. "Legend has it that on the night of the Nativity, whosoever ventures out into great snows bearing a succulent bone for a lost and lamenting hound, a wisp of hay for a shivering horse, a warm cloak for a stranded wayfarer, a garland of bright berries for one who has worn chains, a dish of crumbs for all huddled birds who thought their song was dead, and sweetmeats for little children who peer from lonely windows--whosoever prepares this simply abundant tray, 'shall be proffered and returned gifts of such an astonishment as will rival the hues of the peacock and the harmonies of heaven'." So Sarah gets out her huge willow tray, lines it with a cloth and places a juicy bone from their standing rib roast dinner, a bowl of cat food, hay from the bale she used for autumn decorations, an outgrown warm coat, a string of cranberries, a dish of bread crumbs and sunflower seeds and a plate of sugarplums and places on top of the stone wall in front of her house near the street. She says when she goes out to collect the tray Christmas morning many of the items are gone, including the coat.
We do not live in the city or near the street so instead I think I'll set out a platter of nuts, berries, and bones for the animals that visit our woods. The creche would be a good place to leave it. We'll set up the field camera and see who visits!
What about you? What Christmas traditions mean the most to you? Has this post given you a new tradition to start this year?
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Take Joy!
I can't wait to see what animals visit! Perhaps, the bear will come & get it all....I hope not!
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DeleteCathy, NO ONE knows how to celebrate holidays better than you do! No kidding. I always love reading about any of your holidays. You have pretty much done all the "traditional" things over the years, but as you describe it, it never sounds like "too much." Maybe because it doesn't sound like you've tried to do EVERY thing EVERY year. And as your circumstances have changed [no kids, then kids, now grandkids etc] you make adjustments and changes. Very smart. I love that you still get a real Christmas tree too. I really don't have a tree myself, except a little ceramic one my maternal grandmother made in the 70s at her retirement home's craft class [she made one for each of her 19 grandchildren]. And none of my sibs gets a real tree anymore either. While I understand the "pros" of an artificial tree, something will always be "off" about them for me. I miss the wonderful smell of a natural tree. Takes me back to childhood, when my Dad would keep our tree on the screened porch until Christmas Eve. He only brought it home a few days before Christmas, but every day going & coming home from school I'd breathe in that heavenly balsam scent - incredible!! A very vivid memory for me. What a great idea about the Nativity platter! I don't live in the country but have several sibs that do & might suggest it to them. My brother who now lives in my parents' house [9 country acres with an old overgrown orchard] has animals too - goats, turkeys, chickens, a dog and a cat - plus there are deer who often come up to eat apples on the ground. I can totally see him doing this. PS - the tree pictured just below the snowy one showing someone dragging a cut tree is just gorgeous. You also have a gift for holiday decorating. Of all kinds - house, tree, table, packages!! I love your fondue tradition too. We do real Irish coffee every Christmas Eve, something my Dad started when I was in high school [I think]. It was always a "rite of passage" for us, the year we each became old enough to have Irish coffee. Of course now even the youngest member of the family is old enough, and there are a few of us who are not terribly happy about THAT! LOL. Have a great time getting ready this year. Triple the grandchildren has got be mean triple the fun!! PS - that photo of Gabriel gazing into the fireplace is too cute for color TV!! ⭐️⭐️
ReplyDeleteThank you, Janet. I enjoyed hearing about your Christmases past. I have several "changes" for my tree so that it's not always the same. This year I'm adding plaid to my color scheme. Alejandro will be in Mexico for Christmas this year so there will only be 2 grandchildren this year.
DeleteI have a friend who does the same with her Christmas tree each year. She actually has a sort of "theme" each year and in the early years was usually buying a whole set of ornaments, lights etc to to carry out the theme. Between you and me, there might have been a bit of a shopping problem there, but now she has SO much that she can mix & match between all her goodies. She's really creative like you and I remember the year she went a little rogue and did a pink, silver & gold tree. Very unusual but incredibly beautiful! Ornaments in all 3 colors, and glass ornaments, and tiny white lights, and dozens of homemade bows in all different shades of pink, rose, cranberry etc. Velvet, organdy, watered silk, grosgrain. So pretty - that tree could have won an award! Wish I had a photo I could send you - just dazzling.
DeleteJanet, your friend's tree does sound lovely. The ornaments I love best are the ones I've made myself. Some I started with a bought item--like the unpainted bird houses with chimes for $1 each. I painted them red and covered the roof with pinecone pieces. I've also added "snow" to pinecones and tied pretty fabric to the branches. And of course, there's the cranberry and popcorn garland that really makes the tree homey.
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