Tag: Christmas

Family Traditions — A Mom’s Responsibility?

Posted on January 6, 2015February 2, 2015 by Mama

When I recall my own family traditions from childhood, I’m instantly flooded with wonderful memories and good feelings previously pushed into the past. It’s these moments of reflection that motivate me to create current traditions for my own family. Ultimately, I want to give my son similar memories of wonder and innocence; but, God willing, when I’m 80 I also want to be able to conjure up the memories and good feelings of my own motherhood. So here is my question. Are the best traditions the ones that “just happen,” or are more deliberate plans the way to go? Sometimes I feel like my best laid plans seriously fall flat, but at other times those spontaneous family moments are the things that really stick.

This holiday season, my son, husband and I created a ginger bread train (anything train is a winner right now) that adorned the kitchen table. We had fun creating it and it was a lot less infuriating than I first expected it to be, but who knew the real joy would be destroying it.

On New Year’s Eve at dinner, my son asked if he could eat the train. This sounded like a gross request to me (I don’t like ginger bread trains, no matter how many weeks old they happen to be), but I told him to go ahead and get a taste because it was “going away” in the morning. To my surprise, both my husband and son immediately indulged in the little choo-choo. . . and claimed it to be tasty. I laughed out loud and snapped photos of faces full of the candy laced cookies.

The whole thing was great fun and I announced this moment as the beginning of a new family tradition — the eating of the ginger bread on New Year’s Eve. Of course this means we have to first make the ginger bread every year. Wow, two new traditions at once, but I quickly had to wonder if they would withstand the years. Do I need to be the one to push the event on my family every Christmas or is it okay to skip it every now and then? I mean, seriously, what’s a good mom to do? What did my own mom do? What do most moms do? Do you deliberately create and maintain family traditions or do they just seem to happen?

The Christmas Octopus

Posted on December 24, 2014February 2, 2015 by Mama

I get it now. . . I get the overnighted skates from Canada, I get the paying twice the price, I get the waiting in line for hours. I even get the calling to every store in town, skipping the pleasantries and going straight to, “I need an octopus for Christmas.” Yes, an octopus (preferably orange with blue spots). When your four-year-old son believes with all his might that Santa is bringing him a certain gift, a Mom will do everything she can to deliver on that dream.

My husband and I searched the stores, searched online and finally just picked up the phone and dialed. I ultimately located several octopuses, octopi, or whatever you call a group of such things at the aquarium gift shop downtown. But here was the catch — mid-afternoon, Christmas eve eve and Crown Center Plaza. Do not go there on this day. I battled the traffic but when I arrived the parking garage was full, so I parked way up the street and walked northward in the cold howling wind. (Of course by the time I made my way back to the garage entrance, it had opened once again. Grrr)

It wasn’t the best of circumstances and any other day I might have thrown in the towel, but on this day I was a “Momma on a Mission” and little else mattered. I beamed with pride as I battled the throngs of people and nature’s yucky attitude (or the yucky attitudes of the throngs of people), just to locate my son’s only wish. I understood it, I loved it and I was, for just a moment, Wonder Mom.

I just can’t wait to see the look on our son’s face, if only for a few seconds, when he believes that Santa heard his request and delivered the goods. At that moment I’ll swear, wearing my Wonder Mom cape and all, it was certainly worth the journey. Just don’t ask me to do it again. . . until next year.

The Bait and Switch Christmas Tree

Posted on December 22, 2014February 2, 2015 by Mama

We opted for a real tree this year and planned a whole family outing to the local farm complete with sleigh ride, hand saw and cocoa, but when we suggested the idea to our four-year old he immediately wanted to know how we would get the tree out of the ground. When I explained that we would chop down the tree and bring it home, he became upset at the thought of hurting a poor live tree just for our Christmas wishes. Although I tried to explain that this was a Christmas tree’s destiny and they were grown for this very reason, he still had problems seeing it my way.

So instead of visiting a farm, obviously hurting a tree and crushing my poor son’s heart, we decided that a lot with already chopped trees might be a better choice. So off to the Boy Scouts’ place up the road we went one very cold night. Our little man ran around the lot and through the trees more than once and settled on the ugliest, short and plump tree with a severely crooked top for way too much money. Hmmm, what’s a parent to do?

I’ll tell you what we did. We suggested a dinner break, went to Ace Hardware and picked out a cheap tree by the glow of headlights for a lot less money. In the immortal words of Jack’s Big Music Show, “It’s win-win, baby!”

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