This was going to be a blog about traditions in general and how as you get married, some are discarded, some are changed and some are preserved. However after writing I realized that my favorite tradition is the one that most people find strange.
First a typical "American Traditional Christmas" : Kids wake parents up at crack of dawn. Kids are tired because they didn't get much sleep so they can be a trife cranky. Parents having spent the previous night puting together a bike and sending kids back to bed over and over...are tired as well and also on the short tempered side. Everyone has messy hair and looks horrible in photos. All the kids dive into the huge pile of gifts and simultaniously tear open all the gifts....giving santa credit for all the christmas joy. The parents, exhausted, now clean up and deal with overtired kids that have just ODed on candy from the stockings.....
Now, I will tell you about how I traditionally celebrated the holiday. Christmas Eve day is spent playing in the snow, sledding until our noses turned bright red. When we come inside at last there is hot chocolote and one gift waiting for us....it's always a warm pair of flannel pajamas. We spend the rest of the afternoon watching Frosty the Snowman or other Christmas specials, playing board games and relaxing. That night, we sit down in front of a twinkling Christmas tree. The music is softly playing in the background, candles are glowing. We read the Christmas story as a family and talk about the true meaning of Christmas. There are finger foods lined on the table for us...we have cheese and crackers and marzipan and crab dip and egg nog etc etc...then the youngest child gets to help Dad pass out the gifts. We all sit quietly in a circle till all the presents are handed out. Then one at a time we open a gift and show it off and then thank the person who gave it to us with a big hug. it's a quiet family time where instead of being focused on "me me me", we could enjoy watching them open the gift we picked out and we could thank the person who took the time to think of us. After all was said and done, we were allowed to play in our rooms until midnight (thats when Santa showed up) Christmas morning, we all slept in and played in our rooms when we woke up until Dad came to tell us that pancakes were ready. After a pancake eating contest between my brothers, we would open our stockings and the gift that "santa" brought.
Everyone has traditions. And invariably traditions have to meld or change when you get married because sometimes the other person thinks they are wierd. However, these two traditions, his and mine do not mesh. It is one or the other.
So JU, what do you think? Should I continue to try to convert my husband to my ideallic Christmas or shoudl I give up and go the mass hysteria route?