photo credit: laffy4k

What holiday traditions do you remember and cherish?  How have you adapted them to your celebrations?

Life is about using the whole box of crayons.

— RuPaul

I don’t know about you, but around here we have a whole lot of holiday traditions that beg to be continued every year.

I Remember

I remember when we bought dozens of 64 Crayons Boxes – one for each kid on our list.  And lifesavers books… you remember those, don’t you?  Ten or twelve assorted rolls of Lifesavers boxed to look like a book.  And what about Christmas ribbon candy – that goes way back for me… it used to taste so deliciously special.  My taste buds changed somewhere along the way and I no longer care for those pretties.

Perhaps you don’t celebrate Christmas but some other December holiday.  Whichever holidays you cherish, what are the holiday traditions or year-end holiday celebrations that fill you with nostalgia?  Which are the traditions that bring to mind family and fun for you and yours?  Which of those traditions do you carry forward?

More Holiday Memories Carried Forward

Here are a few more holiday memories that I remember fondly and appreciate that someone (me or, better still, someone else) lovingly carry forward each year:

• In a previous post I discussed Putting on the Christmas Flash – and I must admit, I’m enjoying the pretty lights in my front and back yards, thanks to my generous grandson & nephew.  (And I’m still fighting the wind and the timers and burned out bulbs – but I WILL WIN those skirmishes.)
• My late father-in-law learned to make creamy, chewy carmels from his second wife who was a caterer.  And every year we anticipated his Christmas gift with sweet memories.  And now my second daughter carries on the tradition with her own version of these delightful candies.
• My other daughter, remembers the loooong knitted stockings stuffed with goodies, one stocking for each person in the family… and she carries on the tradition with a family exchange – we each fill one stocking for someone else… it’s a fun, challenging and a creative extension of an old family tradition.
• And, it seems like Christmas morning, in my family’s tradition, was always family-full and chaotic – a mountain of gifts under the tree, all of us a bit sleepy eyed, coffee or cocoa in hand as the gift opening begins.  Again, daughter #1 has carried on the tradition with an open invitation to join their early Christmas morning happenings…
• And, in the spirit of Christmases past, immediately following Thanksgiving I distributed my usual compliment of Advent Calendars – if you or your kids have never been gifted with an Advent Calendar then you’ve missed one of the holiday’s simple pleasures – chocolate morsels behind tiny doors count down the days, December 1st to Christmas Day.  The kids seem get a kick out of them…
  Of course, on 11/30, one of the not-so-little-anymore nephews posted on his Facebook page that, according to his advent calendar, “Christmas is tomorrow.”  So much for delayed gratification!

Written With a Loving Hand

Angela Brown tells a story about her family and AN EMPTY BOX FILLED WITH LOVE:

I am the fourth oldest of nineteen children. We grew up on a farm and didn’t have much money to celebrate a traditional Christmas. Each year we wrapped old shoe boxes in holiday paper and put them under our tree. Each box had a child’s name on it and a slit in the top of the box. During the entire month of December we would take time out each night to write letters to the other siblings. Sometimes we would write poems or funny stories about that person and then place them in their box.

On Christmas morning the family would gather. We would read out of the Bible, sing carols and then open our boxes and read our letters.

Now that we are no longer children, and we have lives of our own, it is still the highlight of the season to wake up Christmas morning to find the ‘box from home’ with all of the letters inside. It’s not the material gifts that we look for, it is the gifts from the heart.

Lovely!  We could all take a page from that family, what a labor of love! What a loving gift!

What holiday traditions do you remember and cherish?  How have you adapted them to your celebrations?