Ghosts of a Christmas Past

by Patricia Cates

In a little square box tucked away in a drawer
Lie oodles of ornaments holding memories galore.
Some came from my grandma, and some came from hers
Some came with red sequins, some came with white furs.

There are reindeer and house pets, and little glass balls
Russian dancers and wise men, even miniature dolls.
Old tinsel found wrapped 'round the leg of a dove
By the finger of sister with all of her love.

She trimmed that fir tree every yule with such glee
That household, that family, one woman plus three.
For the men had all passed much too early in life
And now it was up to a diligent wife.

To carry on a tradition from a hundred years past
And hang every ornament, down to the last.
To the Hoffman's and Chaney's, the Allman's, and kin
I now promise to treasure the gifts I've been giv'n.

So each year I shall take out these small sparkling things 
And remember the love we all shared, and I'll sing!
Silent Night will be first and bring bittersweet tears
For the people I've lost over forty five years.

I'll remember each one of you and thank you for being
A part of my life, and in dreams I'll be seeing
Your sweet happy faces, and warm abode too
I'll dream of your voices and big hugs from you.

I'll bring out the albums to show off your boy.
To prove that he was, my dear father, a joy!
My children will learn of traditions and know
That we all come from you, and your parents, and so...

On 'til it goes back generations and then
With strength we'll create family memories again.
In your honor we celebrate all that's been shared
These gifts that you've given and all of your care.

So join us, please join us, ghosts of a Christmas past
In our hearts, at the table, in stories at last.
Until next year my cherished family of yore 
Thank you for these things and one year more.  



Author's note: The woman I mention is my grandmother, nee Mary Catherine Chaney. She is my paternal grandmother and was born in 1902, and my grandfather, Gordon Samuel Hoffman, in 1898. My grandfather died of a heart attack in 1963. My father, born in 1929, was killed in a car accident when I was 4 months old. Despite her losing her only son a few years after her husband, my dear grandmother kept the tree trimming tradition alive. Some of them date back to the early 1900's. The oldest of these I now keep in a silver box tucked away as they truly are irreplaceable. However my grandmother made many beautiful ornaments with her Garden Club in the 1950's and 1960's. Now my children place them on our tree and I have the privilege of telling them family stories. Sadly she passed away in 1996, and then my sister in 2005. Now it's up to me. Although the poem is childlike and basic in form, it was written in 20 minutes, with love. I plan to work on it. Merry Christmas!

The Christmas Story

By Lacey Gunter

Well, Thanksgiving has come and gone. It was a lovely time of gratitude and reflection. November is swiftly heading for the door as well. Hopefully your writing goals for the month are near completion or you are at least satisfied with your performance. I am right on schedule for completing SkADaMo and only a day behind on PiBoIdMo.  Now it is time to move on to December and Christmas.

Families all over the western world are pulling out Christmas trees and wreaths and listening to carols as they decorate the house. Of all the holidays, Christmas is probably the most rich with tradition.  These traditions can help to combat the growing wave in our society of trying to make Christmas all about the shopping and little about the sacred.

This year I am planning to start a new tradition in my family to try and keep the focus more on the birth of Christ and what it means to us.The idea was suggested to me by a dear friend and I fell in love with it immediately.

Each day in December, leading up to Christmas, we will pick a different picture book retailing of the birth of Christ or some aspect of it and read it together. I have already started picking books I plan to use. There are so many to pick from it is more than easy to find enough and to find the kind that suite your preferences. Here are some of the books I plan to use:


1. Tiny Baby Jesus, Written by Dandi Daley Mackall, Illustraated by Julia Noonan

2. A Child is Born, Written by Margaret Wise Brown, Illustrated by Floyd Cooper

3. The Third Gift, Written by Linda Sue Park, Illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline

4. The Nativity, by Julie Vivas

5. Jacob's Gift, Written by Max Lucado, Illustrated by Robert Hunt

 6. Humphrey's First Christmas, by Carol Heyer

7. We Were There: A Nativity Story,Written by Eve Bunting, Illustrated by Wendell Minor

8. Room for a Little One: A Christmas Tale, Written by Martin Waddell, Illustrated by Jason Cockcroft

9. Baboushka and the Three Kings, Written by Ruth Robbins, Illustrated by Nicolas Sidjakov

10. A Baby Born in Bethlehem, Written by Martha Whitmore Hickman, Illustrated by Giuliano Ferri

11. Christmas in the Barn, Written by Margaret Wise Brown, Illustrated by Diane Goode

12. The Story of Christmas, By Pamela Dalton

Anyone else have any great books about the birth of Jesus they would add to this list? I am really looking forward to this new tradition.

Righteous Traditions

by Becky Porter

I love traditions.

{cue Tevya passionately singing in Fiddler on the Roof}

One of the joys of parenting is providing anchors for our children.  Traditions make great anchors.  They give our children memories, bond family members closer together, and teach what is important to us.

The best are righteous traditions, centered around our religious holidays and observances.  When we have the opportunity to meld the wholly fun moments with the simply holy, we give our children a priceless gift to treasure.

At the Porter house, watching General Conference for two full days every six months is one of our favorite traditions.  It is fun to remember how this--like all good family traditions--has evolved over the years with the growth and changes of our family.  Believe me, listening to General Conference as newlyweds is lightyears different from watching it with toddlers and preschoolers.

Like a gift with many layers, good traditions often have sub-traditions attached to them.  Thus it is for us.  Here are some of the favorite sub-traditions we associate with General Conference weekend.

1.  Making goody baskets for the ladies I Visit Teach. I've been doing this for 5 1/2 years now, and I've done it many different ways, from quite elaborate to very simple to I-just-plain-forgot-to-do-it.  I've used baskets, bags, and buckets.  Pinterest, of course, has a gajillion ideas if you want to incorporate this tradition into your life. 

{the first ones I ever made}

2.  General Conference packets.  This weekend's conference is the first one where I did not kill a thousand trees by printing reams of paper for my kids!  Now that more of my kids are 9+ than otherwise, I don't need as many coloring pages and bingo sheets, etc. to keep them busy, but they sure came in handy when they were all little!  Of course, there have been sessions where I have used the packets myself since I love to take notes and doodle. :-)

{my oldest, five years ago}

{my notes from a couple years back}

3.  Pictures of the prophets and apostles. We want our children to recognize the speakers and be familiar with Heavenly Father's latter-day servants.  We also have used Conference as an opportunity to review all the Latter-Day prophets.  We have done this many different ways, including a Prophet Matching Game I made when they were little.  Currently, we love to hang an 8x10 picture of each of the First Presidency and Quorum of the 12 on the wall, and add sticky notes (each person in the family) to their picture as they speak.

{made this matching game using the Latter-day Prophet posters} 

{fuzzy Instagram shot of our fave new tradition with the sticky notes}

4.  Candy.  Kids always like it when traditions involve candy.  OK, who am I kidding?  I love chocolate!  So, we always eat M&Ms on conference weekend.  They started out as markers for the bingo games in their packets.  Then, we realized we could eat chocolate without having an excuse. Haha!

5.  Spending time together.  No matter what else happens, General Conference weekend is always an opportunity to be together as a family.  Little kids might be crawling around, dogs might be barking at something across the street, older kids might get in a heated argument...but we're together.  And when the prophet of the Lord speaks, we all get quiet for a few minutes.

Tradition...{cue the music. Fade out}

#LDSconf #ShareGoodness

Epiphany

- a post by Jeanna Mason Stay

Merry Christmas, everyone! Two of my favorite Christmas traditions actually occur after Christmas, so I thought I’d share them today. Most people celebrate the twelve days of Christmas starting on December 13th, but originally those twelve days came after Christmas. They were the twelve days intervening* between Christmas and a holiday called Epiphany or Three Kings’ Day.

For the past several years, I have tried to do something fun for my husband for the twelve days of Christmas. One year I came up with small gifts that sort of vaguely related to the words of the “Twelve Days of Christmas” song (starting with pear tarts for dessert and ending with a Radiohead CD). One year I wrote themed lists of things I loved about him or fun shared memories (by the time you hit twelve, it gets really hard to be creative). One of my cheesiest years was a series of silly poems.** This year I can’t tell you the plan because my husband might read this and that would really spoil the surprise.

Here’s what I love about doing the twelve days of Christmas (and doing them after Christmas, not before). If you have kids and a spouse, you may have experienced this phenomenon: You rush around before Christmas, trying to make sure you have just the right gifts for your kids (even if you swore this Christmas would be smaller), trying to make sure that if they have siblings everyone has exactly a fair number (and probably weight and volume) of gifts, and by the time Christmas comes you realize that the gift you got for your spouse was kind of . . . blah. Okay, maybe this is just me, but I have done this a few years. Plus, I find that the hubby is hard to shop for. He doesn’t need or want much, and what he does need or want, we just buy. The best thing I can give him is something a little more personal (even if it’s really silly), something that means I spent time and thought on just him.

Plus, it’s fun trying to think of some way you can represent eleven lords a-leaping as food.

Now for Epiphany (as it’s called in many Christian traditions) or Three Kings’ Day (as it’s called especially in Latin American countries). If you’re not familiar with this tradition, you should be! It’s awesome and fun and a good way to give your family those Christmas presents you couldn’t find in time for Christmas but that suddenly showed up three days later.

My husband is American but was born in Colombia, and his family spent several years in Colombia and Puerto Rico when he was little, so they have been celebrating Three Kings’ Day for years. Now that we’re married, we do it with our own family. Three Kings’ Day is, as you might guess, a celebration of the day the three wise men came to see the baby Jesus (probably not so much a baby anymore, and certainly not twelve days after His birth, but that’s really irrelevant to this discussion). Here’s what you do: On the night of January 5th, you go out and pull up some dead grass from your lawn (or some leaves or whatever). Then you put it in a little shoebox at the end of your bed. While you’re sleeping, the wise men come with their very hungry camels. They are so grateful to see some grass for the camels to eat that they leave you a small present in place of the grass.

We have lots of fun with this tradition. Last year, the camels were so happy that they left a note of thanks (which I wrote in shaky handwriting because, really, what kind of camel knows how to hold a pen well?).*** They also left us two bettas for pets, which turned out to be a terrible idea, but that’s another story.

I love that this is another opportunity to talk about the story of Christmas before it all goes away for another year. I love that it’s a silly, fun way of doing it. I have a real soft spot for the wise men, so I’m happy to get to incorporate them into Christmas a little more. I also love extending Christmas past when most people have stopped thinking about it.

Whether you join in either of these traditions this year (you should! it’s fun!), I hope that your Christmas was lovely and helped you remember the greatest gift we have—our Savior and His sacrifice. I hope your next year turns out just as lovely.

Merry Christmas! 

* There is some wiggle room over whether you start the twelve days on Christmas itself or today, the 26th. I like starting on the 26th and then ending it on Three Kings’ Day (with the final gift coming from the camels), but you can also call Christmas the first day and end on January 5th, then celebrate Three Kings’ Day on the 6th. 
** My favorite was my “Geese a-Laying” poem. Thus demonstrating why I write novels, not poetry.  
*** Okay, without going into the whole “Do we tell our kids that Santa/the camels are real?” debate, I will just say that my kids know who the “camels” really are, and it’s still fun and they love it.

Green Friday

by Mare Ball

In the world of retail, today is Black Friday.   My husband, who is a manager for Home Depot, went to work at 3 a.m.  My son, who works for Gucci, headed to work at midnight last night.  Me, not in retail, I snuggled in my bed until eight this morning.  I felt absolutely gluttonous.

I'm not a Black Friday girl.  Shopping is burdensome enough to me, let alone shopping with everyone else on the planet.   I did some baking today and pulled out some Christmas crafts.  I worked on THE BOOK, and I made this.

It's a fire-proof advent wreath. 

Advent starts Sunday and marks the four Sundays approaching Christmas.  It's a time of preparation.  Not for Santa, but for the Christ child.  Every Sunday, a candle is lit.  The candle can burn throughout a meal, or during a time of devotional prayer; then, it's distinguished.  On the second Sunday, the first candle is re-lit, and a second candle is lit.  This little ceremony is repeated every week, eventually lighting all four candles.

We always had an advent wreath when I was growing up.  Now that my parents are in assisted living, they can no longer have a wreath because they can't have fire in their suite.  This makes sense, of course, but they miss this tradition.

So, I made a cardboard/construction paper wreath they can hang on their door.  It has Velcro "fire" stars they can apply to the appropriate candle/s when needed.  It warmed my heart to be able to create something that enables them to still celebrate advent in a tangible and familiar way.

As I cut and pasted green leaves, I enjoyed the peace of my own home.  I was grateful we'd had a nice Thanksgiving, and I was looking forward to Christmas.  I was happy I was not circling the mall parking lot looking for a parking space, or standing in a winding line waiting to check out.

When the wreath was done, I savored a cup of green tea and ate some homemade biscotti.  Then, I took a nap.   So far, it's been a lovely day.

What color is your 'black' Friday?

(If you'd like to see how I made this wreath, click HERE.)

    

Thanksgiving Traditions

 

Thanksgiving is in a few days and I don’t have to do much, I have been assigned a few things to bring. I am making some delicious fattening Yams with apples, drinks and rolls. I decided to try a new thing on Pinterest (click here) where you ask everyone that is attending dinner what they are thankful for. You then put each paper in a crescent roll. At dinner everyone has to open their roll and read aloud the paper and you guess who wrote it. It sounds fun, and I’m excited to try it, but I am nervous for a few things. What if we can’t find a paper, or one of the kids swallowed it? I am still going to try it. This year will be a trial year for this tradition.

 

We don’t have a lot of Thanksgiving traditions aside from making a different decoration that we plaster our list of what we are thankful for on. It is always fun to see what the kids add. My favorites this year include, turkeys, jumping, hamburgers, horsies, sleep, hot weather, fries, and trophies.

 

I decided that we needed a new tradition for this holiday that really is so important. I was thinking about it and I knew that I wanted it to somehow be in memory of my sweet Grandpa who just passed away. I saw something that someone posted on Facebook and I knew that was it. I decided that we were going to write cards, draw pictures and donate some items for soldiers who are away from their families. My grandpa was away from his family and friends for four years missing three Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. It’s a great way to teach the kids that we can be grateful that we have each other this holiday and also help others. I am really excited about this and hope that others can participate as well. If you are interested in doing the same you can check out the web site (here) and donate different things that are listed on the page. We are so excited to appreciate this holiday just a little more. What are your favorite Thanksgiving Traditions? Is there anything new that you are doing this year?