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DECEMBER 2003 - TIS THE SEASON…TO DO OUR OWN THING
At the moment I am writing this, we are fast approaching Thanksgiving and moving quickly into the Christmas season. I love this time of year and to be honest, Christmas is my absolute favorite holiday. To me, Christmas is not just one day, December 25th, though that is the day of culmination. I love getting together with my family, immediate and extended, exchanging gifts, lots of laughing, occasionally singing and plenty of eating. But I also love from about Nov. 1st when the stores seem to start putting out decorations until after New Year’s Eve, when I immediately hit spring cleaning mode!
Just because this is my favorite holiday does not mean that it is an all fun, jolly, stress-free time, though. The stress began when we got the phone call from relatives wanting us to come spend Thanksgiving day/weekend with them. We love this family and it would be fun, but immediately my mind went to 20 obstacles that I would need to overcome to make this “event” happen. We would need a dog sitter. We have a close friend in surgery at that time. We would have to fight about 4 hours of traffic each direction. We would need to be back early because of other commitments. My husband commutes almost 4 hours/day already and probably would not enjoy more time on the road. I love to watch the parades. They don’t. I didn’t want to pack for a family of 6. I want to get our Christmas decorations out and relax that weekend. I also, didn’t want to hurt their feelings…….especially since it had been a very long time since we had seen them and we really do like to spend time with them. We agreed that I would get back to them in a few weeks, after I mentioned some of my concerns to them. After lots of talking with my husband and weighing the pros and cons, we decided to stay home and invite them down here instead, which it looks like will be happening. Whew………first holiday obstacle/conflict can be checked off and we are able to “do our own thing”!
I got a family e-mail that said that one of my sister’s and her family were in the process of putting up their Christmas tree and a response from another family member who, in fun, teased them that we were still a few weeks away from Thanksgiving. At church that weekend, a joke was made about one of our pastors already having their home decorated for Christmas, also weeks away from Thanksgiving. Well, I am itching to get out our Christmas decorations and put up our tree (chopped down from our back yard) as soon as we find a free moment. The reason so many of us want to start early and sometimes even before Thanksgiving is because we know that our schedules will be busy and it takes a lot of stress off if we can enjoy the process instead of meeting deadlines, barely under the wire. Once we start the month of December, my family is involved with a church Christmas drama that takes up the first two weeks of the month. After that are parties and get-togethers with friends, shopping, wrapping presents, making cookies with the kids and a variety of other things. Putting up our tree and decorations early is another of my family’s way of “doing our own thing”.
A few days ago, I decided to sit down with the kids and find out how they wanted to spend the month of December (besides the normal homeschooling, which they were hoping to have a longer break from!). We talked about things we may be “expected” to do, things we “wanted” to do and things we really didn’t want to include this year. So often I talk about doing fun things together but at the end of the month, we find that we didn’t make time for them. We often crowd out our family time by things others ask us to be involved in. This year, I really want to spend more family time together. We are already beginning to say no to some of the requests coming in and trying to preserve that precious time with the kids that slips away so quickly. We are “doing our own thing”.
A new tradition that we have come up with this year is to give the kids the gift of a special event and make memories instead of toys and cds and other things that they quickly forget or break or lose. We asked the kids what they would love to be able to do instead of opening lots of presents this year. Our 15 year old daughter has recently fallen in love with classical music and operas. She had heard lots of advertisements for performances in Seattle and we did some Internet research and got tickets to go to the newly renovated Seattle Opera House (now McCaw Hall) to see the performance of the opera “Carmen” at the end of January. She is THRILLED! One of our sons wanted to go go kart racing and after some research, we found a place in Kent that has a 90 minute kids driving school where they teach them how to race high performance karts on challenging indoor courses. After getting a certificate, he gets some free driving. He doesn’t know this yet but on Christmas morning when he finds out, I think he will also be thrilled! Andrew, our 6 year old train enthusiast, wants to do the Santa Train and Brandon is planning on watching motocross racing at the Tacoma Dome in March. I will be taking Jill and Andrew and my husband will be taking Jeff and Brandon to their special events, which will also provide one on one time for us with the kids. We will be taking lots of pictures, too! We are so excited to do our Christmas gifts this way this year as the kids also get to “do their own thing”!
So, as I approach this holiday season, I am reminded that even though the pressure is out there to do, to buy, to go, to spend, to indulge, and to over commit, I want to try and stay as true to my family values and desires as possible. I want to do what WE want to do and do it the way that WE want to do it. That took family communicating with each other and listening to what each of us, especially the kids, wanted to remember when the holidays are over. That definitely includes spending time with friends and family and enjoying much of the glitter of the season but it will also be the quiet, candle and tree lit nights, staring intently at our nativity scene, reading the Christmas story of the birth of Jesus, the whole reason we celebrate this special season. Everything we do has a spiritual significance and there is no better time to be reminded of that than Christmas time.
“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace…” Isaiah 9:6 |
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