Aw, I love reading these. Honestly, our Christmas traditions have been all scattered and shot since my mom passed away, and that was seven years ago! In that time, my stepsons have also gone from being high school kids to young men, and they have not always joined us for Christmas anyway (we used to alternate with their mom between having them on Christmas or Thanksgiving from one year to the next, and we spent a lot of Christmas days in the car, driving to pick them up, since their mom lived 3 hours away and never brought them to us). We've had some rough Christmases. Last year we had to cancel travel plans at the last minute because one of my stepsons went into the hospital. So the holidays have really had me feeling like I'm going through the motions for a while now.
This year is the first in some time that I've felt compelled to do something more than the barest minimum of decorating. I actually picked back up on a tradition my mom had as I was growing up. I hauled out the Christmas garden box, full of little houses and people and trees that mom used to use to build a Christmas garden! I used the desk I inherited from my mom as a platform, and built a little Christmas village/garden. Not enough room for a full train track, which we used to do back when my dad was alive and would set up the whole thing, motor and all, but I put a couple of sections of track down and parked some train cars there. I made a pond out of a couple of small frameless mirrors, with a little bridge over it. It's not very big -- my sister has half the decorations and I have half -- but it was fun to do, and it looks cute. I don't know if anyone will appreciate it but me, but that's enough. Remind me of that when I have to disassemble all this and put it away!
We're going to resume our tradition of going to get a real tree this year. I grew up with artificial trees, and when I was out on my own, I craved the experience and smell of a real tree, so most years I've gone that route. My husband and I are looking forward to going to get a tree together in a couple of days when he's back home! We'll put on Christmas music, mix up some festive drinks, put a fire in the fireplace (if it's cold enough!), and I'll do the decorating while he puts some lights up outside. He leaves the tree to me because he figures I like to do it my own way, rather than art direct him!
We do have a tradition of watching at least one of the Lord of the Rings movies at Christmas time, usually on Christmas day. I could probably recite full pages of dialogue from the movies, but I never get tired of it.
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