Merry Christmas all! I can't believe it's this time of year already! I have always loved this time of year, but I find my self anticipating and enjoying it more so this year. I have gotten the house decorated, the tree put up, and I made 2 wreath for the exterior doors (Alaina helped). The lights, the candles, the smells, all so vivid and intoxicating. Our tree is a frasier fur, which really makes no difference to me, but my husband insists on that type in particular and it MUST be a real one. It is interesting to me especially this year for us to figure out our own Christmas tradition. Mark has his family's and I have mine, which are near and dear to my heart, as are his. But at the same time it is a bit of a challenge to pick and choose what we want as a family of our own. Growing up Christmas was always a huge deal in our family, we would have Christmas Eve candle light service, then come home for dinner and open all the presents under the tree. Which always seemed to look a bit absurd with the what seemed like hundreds piling out from the bottom of the tree. My Papa always served as "Santa" for the evening and handed out all the presents accordingly, with a big green bow on his forehead I might add. *sigh* Christmas morning came with great anticipation, as we all knew "Santa" had visited. (Which were just the unwrapped, "big" presents from my parents. I don't even remember if I ever believed in Santa, but it was always a fun tradition we had for as long as I can remember. Then we would spend the rest of the day, playing with all our new loot and toys, most of time staying in our pajamas until well into the afternoon. :-) Mark's family has traditions too. Some of which I don't know yet, but he never grew up with Santa Claus, or the big hurrah of Christmas like my family. They celebrated it certainly but not with the gusto as mine. So now that we have our own home, the time has come to make decisions of our own regarding what is to be done at this time of year. Mark is very much anti- santa, to the point of calling him "satan-claus", which often gets him laughs and the nickname, "Scrooge". I honestly don't care about Santa, cause he's not the point the point of Christmas anyway. Christmas has been majorly commercialized, so I can understand his hesitancy to encourage that. We are spending Christmas this year in NC with Mark's grandparents. It's always fun, very different from what Im used to, but that's not a bad thing. It's just cool to think about our own kids and the stuff and traditions they will remember and that we can do whatever we want for our Christmas, santa or satan claus. :-) One thing that is and will remain the same all three of these families, is that Christmas is to celebrate Jesus Christ and his gift to His gift of salvation to His people. So really and truly all this stuff is irrelevant, as long as our thoughts, hearts and actions reflect that of God Almighty and His Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ what He did for us thousands of years ago on the very first Christmas.
One tradition I will share with you of the Magdziarz family, we make popcorn garland for the tree. Alaina thoroughly enjoys this, if she doesnt eat it all first. I hope she will remember this and look forward to it every year. ;-)
