The Mom Crowd

 I have been thinking about holiday traditions the past few days.  Mostly, I have been feeling anxious about whether or not my family has any.  My kids are now to an age where traditions seem to be part of their development because they understand more about what is going on around them and they want to participate. When I mentioned it to my husband this evening, he was perplexed as to why I felt like we don’t have any. We put up a tree, do an advent calendar, read the Christmas story from the Bible on Christmas morning, open presents….. It was then I was able to clarify that I feel like we are missing something UNIQUE to our little family unit.  What is something that we do over the holidays that incorporates fun and sentiment all in one scoop?

 This year I thought we’d make some roll out sugar cookies together and that maybe THAT could be our special thing. Except when it came down to it, I felt more like Monica Gellar from Friends wanting to shout at the children, “Wait!  You don’t know the system!” And part of me wanted the cookies to look pretty and professional.  The kids had fun dumping out piles of sprinkles over the freshly iced cookies and licking their fingers every few seconds. So much for pretty symmetrically decorated cookies.  At dinner when we were debriefing the whole experience my oldest shared, “Mommy didn’t let us touch anything.”  That isn’t true–I did let them use the cookie cutters but I had to tell them to wait several times–my rationalization is that it was my first time making rolled sugar cookies and I was figuring it out for myself first before I let them help me very much.  All I could see was warped cookies not being picked up carefully and so much sprinkles around me I thought I was at the beach.  In the moment I was thinking that maybe this isn’t what one of our traditions should be.  I have to learn to have more fun and not care if the whole house gets trashed with cookie sprinkles while the baby swipes freshly cut out cookie dough from the cookie sheets. 

 One thing we have done and are planning on doing again is to gather some other friends and go Christmas caroling in our neighborhood. We did that 2 years ago and it really made an impression on our oldest son.  He has asked if we are going this year again.  We are having people meet us at our house after an early dinner and then we will go out for an hour to sing to the neighbors.  We’ll come back to our house for some hot chocolate and desserts to warm up again. 

 Maybe we don’t need any more traditions than what we do have.  Maybe I’m putting too much stock in the need to be unique. Maybe my kids will remember making cookies and going Christmas caroling with fondness and feel all kinds of nostalgia when they think back on their childhood.  I hope so.

 But, I am wondering, what do you do for your special Christmas or holiday traditions? When did you start doing them? Were your traditions passed on from when you were a kid?

Are you taking a Christmas road trip this year? Check out the web tool CostToDrive.com if you need to budget how much it will cost to make that road trip this year. All you have to do is enter your destination and the year, make, and model of your car and then it will calculate about how much would spend on gas getting there. My husband recently shared this gem of a website with me. He had read about it over J.D. Roth’s Getting Rich Slowly blog where he does a more in depth review of the site in his post.

CostToDrive.com is pretty cool if you love to budget and plan for trips like I do!

I read two great articles last week called 10 Things You Should Never Buy New and 10 Things You Should Never Buy Used.  Ironically, I had been thinking that week of all of my favorite hand-me-downs or favorite things that we have bought “new-to-us.”  Some people just are not and will never be hand-me-down lovers.  I am the complete opposite.  I check Craigslist and Ebay very regularly.  There are a lot of items in my house that were either handed down to us or we bought used.  One of my most favorite places to shop is a resale shop called Kid-to-Kid.  While I love hand-me-downs and buying used, there are some things that just are a no-go.  For example, I don’t buy my own clothes used and sometimes, simply for convenience sake, I will spend a little more to buy brand new.  I also ALWAYS buy new when buying gifts for others.

The items that you should never buy new according to MSN include books, DVDs and CDs, children’s toys, jewelry, sporting equipment, timeshares, cars, computer software and video games,  office furniture, and hand tools.  Items you should never buy used according to MSN include laptops, carseats, plasma televisions, DVD players, vacuum cleaners, camcorders, shoes, mattresses, wet suits, and helmets.

I generally agree with these articles.  Carseats, helmets, and other safety gear should always be new! However, electronics are risky when you buy used, but depending on how good of a deal you can find the risk may outweigh the cost.

So, what about you?  Are you a hand-me-down gal or do you prefer to have everything brand new?  What do you think of these lists?  What are your favorite used finds?  What things will you never, under any circumstances, buy used?  

When my husband and I were childless we didn’t not understand what life was like for our friends who had kids. We sometimes wondered why my sister-in-law would leave early from a family dinner so her kids wouldn’t miss their eight o’clock bedtime. We didn’t understand why one night would be such a big deal.

We also had grand illusions of how we would be different as parents. We dreamt of getting sitters often and going anywhere at anytime with our kids. Then reality hit us  with our first baby.

Now that we are parents we certainly have a greater understanding of what it means to parent and we have a lot more grace for other parents.

Here are ten things that we just didn’t understand before our little one came along.

1. Bedtimes and nap schedules are important to keep kids and parents happy.

2. Getting a babysitter is a big deal and expensive.

3. A night out with adult conversation is a treat.

4. How difficult it is to get a great photo of your child.

5. Not feeding kids sugar is important, because it really does make them hyper.

6. You just can’t go anywhere at anytime when you want, no matter how flexible your kids are.

7. Kids don’t always behave as you want them to in public places.

8. It really does take a long time just to get out the door.

9. Don’t assume that a child’s misbehavior is a result of lack of discipline.  Most of the time parents really are trying their best and the kid is just acting their age.

10. Mother’s Day Out and other programs like it are very awesome.

Did you have grand illusions of what parenting would be like before kids? Were there things that you didn’t understand about your friends with kids, but you get now that you are a parent?

As we are knee-deep in the holiday season, I am realizing something kinda important: Lucy has learned who Santa Claus is.  (She’ll be three in a couple of months.)  When we were decorating our tree a week ago, she said, “That’s Santa!”  We think she picked up on it from an episode of “Dora the Explorer”.  She is no longer an oblivious baby with no need to know about Santa one way or another.   We’re now faced with the question:  What do we teach her about Santa?  People are always asking us at Christmastime if we “do Santa” with our kids, especially friends and people we know from our church.  Apparently, it’s a tradition still embraced by most of the church-going folks in my own community.

[Until now, I think my husband & I just looked at this issue with a mixture of ambivalence and laziness.  The older we get, the wearier we become with the whole commercial Christmas machine.  It just seems somewhat insignificant in light of our world’s greater troubles: the poor, the homeless, the sick, the dying, the starving, the oppressed – the people who live on next to nothing and struggle just to survive.  I hate to be Debbie Downer and all, but the more I learn, the less I care about presents or Santa.  My husband and I have pretty much decided not to give each other anything this year – we don’t need more stuff – and donate our Christmas gift budget to a bigger cause.  We did buy small gifts for Lucy and Eli.

I grew up with the magic of Christmas – I think I learned the truth about the jolly fat fellow when I was about nine years old.  I loved Christmas season for the magic it brought with it, especially the gifts.  As a child, the presents are all that matter!  And well into my twenties, I tried to preserve that magic with gift giving galore.  After awhile, though, I realized it was quite a job to shop for people who already have everything they need (or who can go buy what they want any other day of the year).]

But back to the question at hand: what and how do we teach our kids about this time-honored tradition of Santa Claus, Rudolph, and the naughty & nice list?  Ultimately, it is a matter to be decided by each parent or set of parents.  My husband and I need to sit down and decide how much we want our kids to believe, and how much we want to make it about God and the world and its brokenness, about Jesus’ birth and the Giant Rescue Plan God created to bring mankind back to Him.  We also need to agree on how we’ll show the spirit of Christmas to our children – if we make it all about ourselves, the cookies, the parties, the fun, or if we balance it with a concern and compassion for others in need.  (We don’t have it figured out yet, believe me.)

Then we have to figure out how to raise our kids in a culture that preserves and celebrates this annual tradition.  No, I don’t want to be the “mean family” who spoils it for all of the other kids – I would hope we’d show our kids how to have discernment and keep certain things to themselves.  But kids will be kids – they are more honest than anyone.  I really can’t help it if my child wants to share something true with another child, especially if it’s an accident or in total innocence.  It’s not my goal to correct the thinking of other children or to throw another family’s Christmas tradition under the bus.  I’d rather our family be known for its commitment to serving others and being a light in the darkness.  And I have a feeling we’ll be learning what that looks like through a lot of trial and error in the Christmases to come.

I recently read a couple of other articles on this topic, and was somewhat stunned by the extreme points of view people have about the tradition of Santa, especially when I hold them up to my own.  “To each his own” I read a few times on comment boards, and I have to agree.  Read at your own risk, and then decide for yourself whether or not it’s worth your precious time and energy to jump in on an argument that will ultimately lead nowhere.  I say, let’s channel that energy into helping someone in need this season.

• I Refuse To Let My Kid Believe In Santa from the Momlogic Community
• Emily’s next-day response, also at Momlogic
• Should Kids Believe In Santa Claus? from Kaboose
• What a Family Therapist Says from Kaboose

Here at The Mom Crowd, we’d love for you to weigh in on the Santa tradition – I just humbly ask that we be nice to each other as we share our ideas and strategies.  So let’s hear it: To what degree is Santa important in your family’s Christmas tradition?  Are you annoyed with parents who don’t teach their kids about Santa?  Are you annoyed with parents who do?  Like me, are you somewhere in the middle?  Is it possible to teach our kids how to keep a secret in order to protect another child’s innocence?  Is it possible to teach our kids to be passionate about social justice and compassion for others as much as they care about gifts under the tree?