Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Holiday Preparations

This time of year is always difficult for me. My Mom passed away 3 days before Christmas the year I turned 19 ~ in fact, the last time I saw her was on my 19th birthday. Growing up in the military made a big difference in how we celebrated the holidays, and my Mom always tried to make sure we kept to our traditions, as best we could, no matter where we were living. If we were in Arizona we would have Thanksgiving dinner at my Grandma’s house and then everyone would troop over to our house for Christmas dinner. I can only recall two times that the grandparents came to us on Thanksgiving – the year my sister, Susan, made a surprise appearance two months before her due date and the year my Mom passed away. That year she was just too ill to travel, so we did Thanksgiving at our house. It was the last holiday we would all celebrate together.


When I got married and was out on my own, we would invite all of my first husband’s single friends over for Thanksgiving dinner – he was in the Air Force and there were a lot of guys who were single – and boy could they eat!! During the years I was divorced the family would gather at my other Grandma’s house for Thanksgiving. Nowadays my husband and I have Thanksgiving dinner at our home for anyone who wanders in – Steve’s brother usually joins us, and we extend the invitation to others in our life who are without family, so we’re never really sure who is going to show up! It is always a good time – and it definitely keeps me busy! I also take the week of Thanksgiving off from work so that I have time to bake and prepare for the feast.

Our Christmas tradition when I was growing up was to decorate the tree on my birthday. I always strung popcorn to hang on the tree, and we had many ornaments that each of us made in school, along with the glass balls and lights. We opened gifts on Christmas morning but had to wait until whichever of my siblings was the youngest at the time to wake up. Pinching them usually worked! LOL!! Then the grandparents, aunts, uncles and all would come to our house for dinner. I think the strangest Christmases we spent were when we lived in South America. Christmas comes in the summer there, so we were on summer vacation and would get gifts like swimsuits and such. And there were no traditional pine trees to chop down and decorate, so my Dad bought us a Star Pine in a huge pot and we brought that inside and decorated it each year. All in all I have many wonderful memories and try to keep those foremost in my mind during this time of year.

So as the holiday season draws near, I try to keep busy, carry on the family traditions as best I can and, most importantly, stay focused on the many blessings the Lord has bestowed upon me.

I would love to hear how some of you celebrate and manage to keep family traditions alive!

1 comment:

  1. After all of the years of being a single parent and having Cynthia gone on holidays, I learned to celebrate whenever we could. Christmas would sometimes be early and sometimes late - but it would always be there. Now I just follow them wherever they are going! For me, it is family celebrations.

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