Christmas Traditions

First of all, thank you, thank you, thank you, all of you wonderful and affirming dear ones who commented (favorably) on my glasses. I have grown to really like them and am no longer recoiling in horror when I see my reflection in a window.

I am surprised that no one commented on my earrings in that picture, though. Gingerbread men, people. I had gingerbread men dangling from my earlobes. I've decided that my new Christmas tradition is to forgo the tacky sweaters and concentrate my holiday merry-making on my earwear because it's easy and fun to have a different set of earrings for all the days of Advent as well as the 12 days of Christmas.

This is in keeping with my new policy that whatever I decree to be a Christmas tradition becomes a Christmas tradition and whatever I decree is no longer a Christmas tradition is no longer a Christmas tradition, amen and amen. In this way I plan to keep myself sane and guilt-free in the coming years.

All the years the Boys were growing up I tried to make sure our family had cherished traditions that made the Christmas season a magical treasure chest of beloved memories. The drive around Small Town on Christmas Eve to see the lights. The orange and unshelled peanuts in each stocking. The six nativity sets strategically placed where some could be rearranged and some could not. The endless crunching of sugar on the kitchen floor as we decorated sugar cookies and made homemade candy for Husband's clients.

In spite of all those beloved memories, when I asked Boy#2 a couple of weeks ago what traditions he remembered from his growing-up years, he could only think of one thing: Dueling Santas.

The Dueling Santas started out with a Bongo Santa, a gift from the Boys' grandmother. She sent it when they were in their early teen years having apparently forgotten that they were still not in pre-school. This little battery-powered St. Nick played tropical drums and gave Christmas carols a tinny reggae beat that was funny every. single. time. we hit the play button between the bongos. We laughed and laughed, but not as much as we laughed the next year when another Solo Santa showed up, identical to the first one. Not only were two Bongo Santas twice as funny as one Bongo Santa, they could DUEL! Which would finish the Jamaican version of "O Little Town of Bethlehem" first if you pushed the 'on' switch at the same moment?

And you know what? Having Dueling Santa races was so much easier than sugar cookies and homemade candies that I stopped my holiday cooking, and so much more fun than oranges and peanuts that I stopped stuffing stockings with food on Christmas Eve. 

Now we're down to Dueling Santas as our only Christmas tradition, and that's just fine with me. Except I'm declaring Christmas earrings a tradition, too. Because they're easy and fun and because I say so.