Marsha Musings: How do You Celebrate the Holidays?

It's the first of December ...how do you celebrate through the coming month? Do you do anything special? What traditions do you keep?

Our children always put up the Christmas tree the weekend after Thanksgiving. They are working on it right now. It's been fun the past hour listening to them work together on it. In year's past they used to fight over who got to put the top on and who got to put on what ornaments. I wondered when they would ever get past that. Well, this looks to be the year. They have been having alot of fun tonight, working together on it, taking pictures of each other in silly poses while they are decorating. I've enjoyed listening to them.

For the last two years, we have incorporated a new holiday tradition. We take a bag of groceries for each of us and donate at the local Hell's Canyon Jet Boat Tour office where they issue each donor a ticket for the Christmas Jet Boat Tour on the river to see the Christmas lights along the river. This has been a fun activity where we get to help the needy of our community and have a fun boat ride too. They always decorate the boats with lights, serve hot chocolate and cookies on board and play Christmas music on the loud speakers. The boats hold about 50 people each and we spend about an hour out on the water. It's great fun.

Another tradition my daughter has enjoyed is helping the community decorate Locomotive Park for Christmas.

We usually drive to my family's for Christmas. It's an hour and a half drive from our place. We celebrate Christmas Eve with them and then come home Christmas Day to celebrate at home.
My dad always reads the Christmas story out of Luke before we open our gifts. It's a nice way to focus our attention on the real reason for the season.

During the month of December our kids open a little window on the advent calendar each day. Our advent calendar isn't exactly religious. It's a Lego advent calendar. But we read the Christmas story through out the month of December in our family devotion times.

Of course there are the usual flurry of Christmas parties to attend...usually one with our church, one with the homeschool group, one with the youth group, and my husband has one with his work.

So how do you celebrate?