Merry Christmas!

My mom is all about traditions. At our house the Christmas traditions that have lasted to adulthood include:

* an Advent wreath. My mom puts it on the dining room table and we light the candles before dinner on the 4 weeks leading up to Christmas (three purple, one pink). After it is lit my mother or father will say "Our King and Savior draweth nigh" to which we reply "Oh come let us adore him" and then sing Oh Come, Oh Come Emmanuel altogether
* attending the 11pm Christmas eve service
* putting up a Christmas tree (of course)
* wrapping gifts after church, late into the night
* eating apricot horns for breakfast (a homemade pastry with apricot filling)
* having the local, commercial-free classical music station playing all day long
* opening the gifts in age order, round robin so everyone can see what everyone else got
* taking tons of photographs
* eating Christmas dinner late
* eating homemade sugar cookies from my grandmother's recipe

(other kid traditions included doing an Advent calendar, participating in the Christmas pageant, hanging a stocking at the fireplace, leaving cookies out for Santa and carrots for the reindeer, moving the three kings closer to the manger until they arrive on the 12th day of Christmas...)

I am all about tradition and family and that is one of the main reasons I can't wait to have children --to pass down and start creating traditions of my own. Yet, I find myself celebrating another Christmas without a family of my own. I am extremely grateful and blessed to still have my parents here with me to celebrate (they are in their 80's) and it's nice to see other family members, but I so yearn to have my own family and start my own traditions, and holidays are a reminder of the things that I want so badly but are still just out of reach. So, like last year, I wasn't really looking forward to the holiday. It didn't help this year that with my new job we had to work all the way until the 23rd. Then I was too tired to make the drive on the 24th which meant I missed the Christmas eve service. I didn't realize how much I was going to miss it, but when I think about it, I have attended that service for almost 40 years! Talk about tradition! Then I missed the early morning apricot horns and had a bowl of Cheerios instead! You can see how it felt like any other day.

Well, it didn't turn out to be so bad after all. The drive up here was quicker that usual (the weather cooperated) and there was barely any traffic. My mom handed me a plate of apricot horns when I arrived and I sat down at the table to enjoy them with the classical music station playing in the background. Yeah, there are no kids around (my niece and nephew are 21 and 18 respectively) and yeah, I was still wistful, but we laughed and drank wine and had an amazing meal and exchanged gifts and ate hundreds of sugar cookies. I survived. It wasn't so bad... but NEXT YEAR is going to be SO MUCH BETTER! I just know it! Mark my words.. I'm going to post a link to this post next year! lol

I hope you had a very merry Christmas!



NaBloPoMo #25 theme:thankful