meaningful traditions

[i share this guest post on The Sapphire Bee last month while she was on her awesome cruise. since we are traveling for the holidays i thought i would share it again with all of you too :)]

this time of year i always start thinking about my family's holiday traditions growing up.
or maybe lack thereof...

i mean, we had a few things that we kept pretty true to, but we were rather inconsistent with what we did each year. 

maybe it was because i was so much younger than my older siblings so the simple things of baking cookies and making gingerbread houses didn’t appeal to them anymore and so my parents stopped doing that. 

or maybe it was because my family just got so busy that it got hard to keep up. 

whatever the reason, the traditional things like gingerbread houses and leaving Santa cookies started to fall away as i grew up.

but there were always some things that stayed the same.

Christmas 2010

+ my mom always made her famous rolls and we took them to all of our neighbors. and i mean all of our neighbors! hardly anyone was left out on our Christmas list.

+ we would have a big family party a few nights before Christmas and all the grandchildren would act out the nativity scene and read the story of Christ’s birth from the Bible. {a tradition i greatly miss this year with my grandma's passing...}

+ before we could open any presents, my dad would read out of the Bible and share a special Christmas message.

+ and although we didn’t have a lot of money growing up, my parents taught us the importance of giving rather than receiving at Christmas.

these are all just a few examples of the small and simple traditions we had growing up.
they might not seem like much, but through my parents’ example of showing love to others i learned the true meaning of Christmas.

it is not about what we get at Christmastime or how many sweets we can eat.
what is important is that we are spending time with our loved ones and together remembering the true meaning of Christmas.

“Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth, peace, good will towards men.”

and to quote my favorite Christmas movie, “That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.”

Christmas 2010

Merry Christmas!!