By the time most Nanas get to be 56 years old with 6 grandchildren, they have the holiday celebrations "down to a science". I have wonderful friends who all have their special holiday traditions and who are each experts in some facet of Christmasology.
But alas, Nana Ruth is a neophyte in the celebration of the Lord's birthday...
Since celebrating Christmas is still not a "family thing" for everybody at my house, I have had to work at learning about Christmas traditions. I have tried to focus on spiritual traditions. For example, I am praying my first Christmas Novena this year.
I helped with the Christmas Social at my college, and attended with my grandson (who loved the whole thing). We also went to the CCD Christmas party, the Elementary School Christmas party, and his homeroom Christmas party. Haydon has already received a number of Christmas "present bags". I have surprises for him and the other grandkids stuffed in my trunk for the big day. But I have been trying to impress on Haydon the spiritual meaning of the Season, and that Christmas is Baby Jesus' birthday, not Haydon's birthday.
Yesterday, after we went to his homeroom party, Haydon came to my room with a ribbon bedecked candy cane with a piece of chocolate attached to it. He solemnly presented it to me as my present.
I have to confess, I was tempted to tell him to keep it. To tell him, "it's yours, you can have it". He loves candy canes and adores chocolate!
I'm happy to say that I resisted the temptation. Swallowing hard, I smiled and said "Thank you very much". How can I deprive him of the joy of giving me a present?
So have a Blessed Advent, a Merry Christmas, and a wonderful New Year. And send me your favorite Christmas traditions, so I can start to figure this whole thing out.
Ave Maria!!
3 comments:
Hi Nana,
When our children were little, we made our own Advent Calendar. I would buy a sheet of Bristol board, and cut a door for every day of Advent. The children would go through the old Christmas cards, and cut out a picture to put behind each door. Then I would look up a bible verse to go with each picture, putting that on the inside of each door.
The children would open the doors in turn. The child who opened the door also got to blow out the advent candles, choose the songs for our devotion, and, when they could read, they read the Bible verse, and choose the prayer that we would say together.
Then we learned about the Jesse Tree (the domestic-church.com has instructions). After that we followed the Jesse Tree readings. We made a tree, and made the ornaments for the Jesse Tree each year, until I made cross stitch ornaments.(You can see them on my blog. The pictures are from last year. (http://loveinidleness.blogspot.com/)
I had two lovely Jehova Witness ladies visit for years, and we would have lovely discussions. I remember one Advent - I think that the opening that they gave me was to claim that Christmas practices were inherently pagan. I invited them in & showed them our Jesse Tree, explaining that it traced salvation history.
I think it was so kind of them to come right to my door to give me the opportunity to evangalize. Unfortunately, they no longer come around. We had wonderful conversations - about contraception, and the procreative and unitive meanings of the marital act.- all kinds of topics that even fellow Catholics would have ducked.
God bless you this new year.
Trudy
Hi Nana,
When our children were little, we made our own Advent Calendar. I would buy a sheet of Bristol board, and cut a door for every day of Advent. The children would go through the old Christmas cards, and cut out a picture to put behind each door. Then I would look up a bible verse to go with each picture, putting that on the inside of each door.
The children would open the doors in turn. The child who opened the door also got to blow out the advent candles, choose the songs for our devotion, and, when they could read, they read the Bible verse, and choose the prayer that we would say together.
Then we learned about the Jesse Tree (the domestic-church.com has instructions). After that we followed the Jesse Tree readings. We made a tree, and made the ornaments for the Jesse Tree each year, until I made cross stitch ornaments.(You can see them on my blog. The pictures are from last year. (http://loveinidleness.blogspot.com/)
I had two lovely Jehova Witness ladies visit for years, and we would have lovely discussions. I remember one Advent - I think that the opening that they gave me was to claim that Christmas practices were inherently pagan. I invited them in & showed them our Jesse Tree, explaining that it traced salvation history.
I think it was so kind of them to come right to my door to give me the opportunity to evangalize. Unfortunately, they no longer come around. We had wonderful conversations - about contraception, and the procreative and unitive meanings of the marital act.- all kinds of topics that even fellow Catholics would have ducked.
God bless you this new year.
Trudy
Trudy:
Thank you so much for your suggestions ;-). I will save them for next year. I especially want to look up the Jesse Tree, as I haven't heard of it before.
God bless you for sharing your faith with the Witness ladies. One thing that I always remember from my days of knocking on doors is how nice my Catholic neighbors were to me.
Please keep the Witnesses (and Ex-Witnesses) in your prayers.
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