Christmas IS the most wonderful time of the year, and one of the "wonders" is creating our own family traditions that hopefully will be anchored in our girls' hearts.
One fun tradition we started when Cora was in kindergarten is walking up and down each street in our neighborhood, tallying how many houses are lit up for the season. With Vi in school, too, she is excited to have her own chart.
(For the record, this year our street won the participation trophy - 100% of our houses are decorated!)
Decorating the Christmas tree is another fun tradition, as it is for most families. We wondered if the cats would react differently to having a real tree, compared to our artificial tree, but they didn't.
Attending our church's Christmas service is a tradition we value, as we focus on Christ's birth and what His coming means for us today. This year our church had some characters like Elsa outside before the service, to help light the giant Christmas tree.
Keeping with that theme, the last couple of years we've been using these
special ornaments that each share an aspect of Jesus. Violet this year
reads well enough to read the Bible verse, and Cora read aloud the
little devotional explanation. This one here was about Jesus stating he
is the "Bread of Life," who came to satisfy the hunger in our souls.
This year, we also read through some other Christmas stories, and on Christmas Eve, Cora read "Twas the Night Before Christmas."
And, Violet, who still believes in Santa Claus, put out carrots for the reindeer and cookies for St. Nick. She and Cora wrote him notes, and excitedly went to bed, hopeful for Christmas morning.
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