Tradition

In November when Deborah, The Humble Housewife, the Fun Monday hostess asked about holiday traditions, I spoke about Thanksgiving because we keep Christmas rather simple. And then later, Karisma asked about a childhood memory, I spoke about my childhood fear of Santa. Last Monday, Kaytabug of Lady K asked us to show our favorite ornament. As I visited other Fun Monday sites, I noticed many of the participants had fully decorated homes. These events as well as driving throughout our town viewing the festive decorations of the homes in my community caused me to reflect. Although our decorating is low key, Daddy D and I do have a few decorating traditions that we practice every year.

For example, we display Christmas cards above our doorway; this tradition is past down from my parents. However, as they were conscientious and sent cards, they received many cards in return.

Our tree has mostly been small. Our current version is actually the top of an artificial tree. The ornaments are those with special meaning, gifts from students, or made by our children. Under the tree are floppy reindeer from some fast food giveaway.

Another tradition, which we started because of cats and small children, was hanging breakable ornaments on the kitchen bulletin board. We no longer have cats, and our children are in their thirties, but we still display some special ornaments on the bulletin board.

We have a creche that my parents gave us many, many years ago. And, we have a whimsical Holy Family created by the youth at church. One of our newer customs is to display the flower pot Mary and Joseph on our kitchen table. We also keep these snowman salt and pepper shakers as part of the holiday decorations.

I sometimes think that we are not especially attached to traditions. However, although our displays are simple, I realized that we do decorate a certain way each year. Furthermore, although our decorating tends to be like our shopping a last minute affair, when I could not find some of our ornaments on Friday night, I was distraught. Maybe I do like a few traditions.