What Are Your Holiday Traditions?

Great thread!
We bake a gingerbread house and decorate it, even with the difficulties of food allergies preventing use of dairy, egg, soy, chocolate, food colors, and now cinnamon.

We also cherish a tradition of getting a small piece of frankincense and another of myrrh, to burn while reading the story of the gifts of the Magi, and it smells wonderful. I grew up knowing that frankincense and myrrh were gifts given, but never knew anything about what they were, what they looked or smelled like, or what they were for. It's nice to have those things as part of our Christmas celebration, and it deepens the sense of connection with the ancient tales and traditions.

We also love to read stories about who Saint Nicholas was, and how that eventually turned into the legend of Santa Claus, and look at the related traditions of Grandfather Frost in Russia, and Father Christmas elsewhere.

The best tradition of all though, is one my mother didn't even know she was starting. When I was a kid, she was really struggling, working two jobs and exhausted, penniless because of wage freezes paired with double-digit increases in property taxes. She was desperate, because she couldn't buy her children gifts. So on Christmas Eve, she turned off all the lights and everything electrical, even unplugged the noisy humming refrigerator, lit candles, and poured fragrant cups of Christmas Tea, and by candlelight, taught us to hand-stitch little scrap cloth Doves of Peace, to stuff and hang on the tree. We sang carols around the piano while she played, and it was the most magical and memorable Christmas of my childhood. Only in adulthood did I learn, that all these years, she carried guilt, thinking it had been the worst Christmas, just because we didn't have much for presents. What we had in abundance that year, that made it so wonderful, instead, was Presence.

Last year, I was out shopping with two small tired children, less than 2 weeks away from giving birth, leaning over to have contractions on Christmas Eve, instead of home with my family, because relatives had ignored our plea against material gifts, and we felt obligated to give in kind. This year, it's not happening, and I am giving fair warning to the over-gifters, that they can give to a charity instead, because we are not going to support a Corporate Christmas any longer.

This year, it is going to be Christmas Tea, candlelight, and our family circle, no hubbub, no glitz and crazed consumerism, but the joy of real connection and Doing Things, rather than Getting Things.