I love Christmas! Just love it and I can't wait to share this holiday with our child. Hubs and I don't have any traditions, we have family in three states which means Christmas is often spent elsewhere.

One tradition I want to start for my child is every year I will buy them an ornament. This way when they move out on their own they will have a box of Christmas ornaments to put on their tree.

A family we're friends with reads
t'was the night before Christmas to the children on Christmas Eve. I think that is another one I would like to adopt!

[SomeBunniesMom]

My husband and I had been talking about Christmas traditions this week, so it's funny you would start a thread about that very subject.

I also very much like the ornament a year idea. I love Christmas ornaments anyway, and I think it would be great to have a collection of special ornaments that i have collected for the kids over the years to send off with them when they have homes of their own one day.

I have been feeling that Chirstmas has become way too commercialized and it depresses me somewhat. Before we got the children I wanted to de-emphasize the expensive gift exchange part and focus more on spiritual and simple gifts. Which is kind of odd for me since I'm not an overly religious person.

My children were born on Christmas eve but they were not with us at that time. Their first Christmas in America was their first birthday, which is a little confusing to some people. My kids got a ton of gifts from family and friends and we also bought them a lot of stuff, mostly for the pleasure of being able to buy gifts for our own kids. But then I thought well, this is so far away from the more simpler way I wanted to start celebrating with my family. We need to do something very different this year.

This is what my husband and I were thinking about doing. Since the kids get a lot of gifts from other people, we thought that instead of buying them so much ourselves, we would stick with a more sentimental gift, such as a special ornament, and instead give a donation in their name to the orphanage that they came from. We figure there isn't anything we really need -- now that we have our family we have everything we want. We would like to show appreciation and gratitude to the people who took care of our children until we could get them, and to the people who made it possible for these children to be with us. I think that would really satisfy my sense of "de-materialized" giving, and be something that has so much more meaning than a few toys that the kids would outgrow in a few months or so.

What do you all think? Is this realistic?

[laurajane]

Howdy,
We too have to spend Christmas with relatives so it is a hectic time. One tradition we had growing up and my husband has let me continue it, and my son loves it. As a family when it's time to trim the tree, we have a party. Serve the same finger foods we only serve once a year at that party, play music and just have a fun family time together. My 3 year old loves to hang the non breakable ones and the bottom half of the tree. It's the only way to make sure that as a family that time of year we spend some quality time together.

[drewnphilipmom]

We have always done the ornament thing. My grandparents started it with my sister and I when we were babies. We have carried on the traditon with our kids.

We did start a new tradition this past Christmas. Our oldest son has always bugged us to open one gift on Christmas Eve. He is now 14 and this year we gave in but we picked the present. Little did he know we had this planned. We gave him new pajamas ( lounge pants with chili peppers on them) I had bought a new sleeper for the baby as well. Plus Hubby and I bought each other new jammies as well. We all wore our pajamas that night. It was alot of fun. Even 14 year old DS liked it and thus a new tradtion was born. We have another new baby joining our family in late August/early September (our younger son's bmom is pregnant again and wants us to adopt this baby as well) I am already looking for PJ's for next year for all 5 of us. I am hoping this year I can find matching ones for all.

Cathy

Don't take your organs to heaven - heaven knows we need them here.