Holiday traditions are a work in progress at Casa de Dummies.
I mean, we have them sort of and we celebrate them when I remember.
It’s just that we’re still sort of a developing country when it comes to traditions and stuff and we’re still deciding what’s gonna stick and what just leads to war.
Perhaps I’m a little over ambitious in the holiday traditions department.
I so badly want to be one of those awesome families that collect something cool (like memories), so when I kick off The Dudes can go up into my attic to clean it out, and stumble upon this financially useless, emotionally priceless treasure trove of holiday snow globes or whatever-similarly-odd-trinket-one-can-purchase.
They could have a good cry over it and remember how awesome of a mom and human I truly was.
Which is why I actually started collecting snow globes a while back. I used to get them when we’d go on vacation so they’d be city themed.
Until I realized that we sorta always visit the same cities.
And all of our waste-of-$12 snow globes looked the same; cloudy renditions of the Golden Gate Bridge. Or the Empire State Building. Or the Washington Monument.
So I quit it.
Not like that side story was even remotely related to the holidays, but perhaps it serves as a good example to how insane I am about creating holiday traditions that The Dudes will look back upon with annoyance and reverence at the same time.
Pretty sure I’ve failed a little so far.
Like this country I call The Casa, I’m a work in progress.
But, I’m trying…
Dumb Mom’s Guide to Developing Holiday Traditions to Make Kids Look Back on Their Lives with Less Horror and more Appreciation (If you Ever Remember to Celebrate Them)
1. The Holiday Photo.
Yes, I completely on purpose started off with the one holiday tradition I’m 99% sure we’ve actually done every year since Dude #1 made an appearance. You guys know how I roll with the holiday photo card. Be warned, it’s all downhill from here.
2. The Custom Ornament. This is our holiday version of the aforementioned snow globes (see, method to my madness revealed). We buy one every year. They started off cool; as a fun way to represent events our family celebrated the preceding year. We’d add a new person to the ornament when kids were born. We’d get them based on our vacation destination. We even bought one shaped like a door the year we bought our first house. Then we realized that we really don’t do anything special anymore (all of the kids are born, the house is bought & we couldn’t afford to move if we had to, and we always go on the same vacation if we even go at all) so all of the ornaments started to look the same. The five of us (as snow people, or reindeer, or bears…) huddled around a tree or stuffed onto a sled. We still buy an ornament that we get customized every year (fancy way of saying we pay extra for some high schooler to write our names on it with a permanent marker), we just don’t bother trying to make it symbolize anything other than our existence.
3. Home made gifts. We tried this Christmas. Like really tried. They mostly cried and hated it and then sat there and ignored me entirely while I made an ornament all by myself. The Dudes hate crafting. That much is clear. And I suck at it. Really, quite badly. Not sure why I even try. No one likes home made gifts anyway.
4. Baking. I pretty much did all of my baking solo this year. It’s the only way to prevent The Dudes from coming to blows over who will lick the two beaters. I eat the both of them myself. It’s the only way.
5. Christmas Eve Jammie Gift (CEJG).
We do the whole it’s-Christmas-Eve-let’s-choose-a-gift-to-open-in-jammies thing. The gift is always the same: a movie or a Wii game we can play as a family. At just the last minute, Dumb Dad and I realized that we’d not secured this year’s CEJG. I’d like to thank well timed TV advertising for that save because thanks to their incessant holiday commercials featuring door busters and all manner of things I rarely aim to be a part of, we remembered that we still needed to secure our copy of Shrek Forever After for CEJG. We picked it up on Christmas Eve day so all could be right with the world. Leave it to us to get the TV watching portion of our holiday traditions 100% correct!
Guess it’s time to focus on our New Years traditions now.
They all involve wine; me drinking it and them watching, so I imagine that’s really only super fun for one of us.*
But we do get together with our neighbors and pop off a bunch of fireworks in the driveway of the family who decided to ditch our annual street NYE party.
And, you know what?
We don’t clean it up. We just leave all of the glittery firework paper trash right there on their land.
Bad. Ass.
See you tomorrow for the last Wordful Wednesday of 2011.
It will be epic.
Sort of.
*I don’t really drink wine anymore (only just rarely when I want to get drunk). Despite the fact that my 2 year old outsmarts me on a daily basis, I learn from my bad choices. You know, after repeating them many, many times.
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Now I’ve got to get a photo up of my trio in their holiday jammies. THey are much cuter than our psycho neighbors who, grandpa down to youngest grand, all wear matching pajamas as they parade into the house next door on Christmas morning for a traditional brunch. Uuuuuhh, ya. Hubs would come closer to a knit red moose sweater than wearing the same footie flannels as my father.
Thank GOD!!
These are wonderful things to do; I’m sure your kids will always remember your efforts.
My mom used to do similar things like that for us around the holidays; she did everything within her power to make the magic last for as long as it could, up until my 18th birthday. Which means that she was doing it for about 27 years or more (my oldest sister is 9 years older than me). She would cook and bake up a storm in the kitchen for us, and before she died, she wrote down all of her family recipes (which had never been written down before, just taught generation to generation). She buried the recipe book in the Christmas decorations box (which she knew we’d never touch because we’re really lazy) and we found it last Christmas– the first Christmas without her– and a love letter to her daughters. It was like she was really there through her words.
So, (after I’ve monopolized your post with my comment) yes, your kids will remember any special effort that you make when you “kick.” Because the holidays without your mom SUCK hard. Leave behind any pieces of yourself that you can; don’t think you’re being egotistical about it either, because when your kids only have straws of you to grasp in many, many, years to come, they’ll hold onto them with a death grip.
You always make me smile. We suck royally at the holiday crafting, too. My boys hate it, I’m terrible at it, I usually end up making everything myself and then telling people the kids did, just to save face. (That’s also how I explain my terrible gift wrapping.)
We do the Christmas Eve jammies and the holiday card thing, but the ornament thing only sometimes. Fail.
I do things like this, but I never really thing of them as traditions, even though I guess they really are.
I like the xmas eve pj idea. Except, then I’d be chasing my son around because CHANGING is THE WORST THING IN THE WORLD. Argh. Hope you had a fun xmas day!