Spooky Holidays 2010/11

[A Cousin]

I've been married for 18 years but I suppose that you could still call our family a "baby" family as the kids are still young. The normal small child stuff is in place - Santa Claus, Christmas tree, decorating the house, just for instance. House decorating is big in my town - maybe I'll post a pic when I get it done.

My family is spread across the four corners of the US so Thanksgiving visits are not feasible. We all touch base via phone though. It is a small and quiet holiday for us - just us, my sister-in-law and a friend and her daughter. The Uni I work at has a program I want to start taking part in where you can host an exchange student for the day. I need to get on the ball about that....

After Christmas however, we take a family road trip and drive the 800 miles to visit my mother in Indiana. It takes us 2 days (one-way) and must have a hotel with a pool in the middle. My husbands parents have passed away but we used to stop for a couple of days at their house on our way.

The husband and I have a ball playing Santa Claus, but as the kids get older and don't buy into the Santa Claus legend anymore, we have started to re-evaluate the traditions. We like to take a pantheistic view of the Winter Holidays so we talk a lot about the various Winter Holidays in various cultures - starting with Diwali and ending with Chinese New Year. Some will stay the same - Christmas Eve at my sister-in-laws house, mimosas and cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning, opening presents - but we are going to start to transition from them receiving to them giving of themselves by donating their/our time.

Traditions take time and, at least for us, have developed by accident over time. I am probably not even aware that they have changed from just "what we do" into traditions!

I'd be curious to hear from anyone what Holiday traditions you have chosen to carry over into your adult celebrations and what traditions you have actively not chosen to carry over?