Creative Christmas Traditions

Christmas has been full of traditions for us since my husband and I were dating 25 years ago. Since the birth of our children, our lifestyle has always revolved around family, parenting, education and tradition! We home-schooled our children for about 10 years. We have a strong faith and belief in spirituality and religion. As a Catholic family, our holiday traditions are based in Advent and Christmas.

I developed a unit of education encompassing the Advent season. For the four weeks before Christmas, we steeped ourselves in the history and spirituality of our religion. We explored the history of holiday traditions of other people and cultures.

We would 'travel' in books, art, music and movies to different holiday celebrations around the world! We admired their art and architecture, especially the cathedrals and religious art. We read books of literature and folktales of holidays in many lands. We listened to hymns and folksongs; Mazurkas from Poland, carols from Germany. 'Stille Nacht' and 'O Tannenbaum' we learned in our beloved German and sang in nursing homes We memorized the Latin hymns 'Ave Maria' 'Adestes Fideles' and the 'O' antiphons for midnight mass.

We tasted foods and made treats from Cannoli from Italy, lebkucken and kindergluwein from Germany and patisseries from France. We explored holiday designs and decorations; Arabic mosaics, Byzantine stained glass and Russian nested dolls. We made traditional crafts from many lands: Peru, Lapland and Korea.

For our religious observances, we followed the Advent season, but we added the Netherlands holiday of 'St. Nick's Day' on December 6. The children of Holland leave their shoes out for St NIck on his white stallion to place goodies in; we have done this every year since!

On December 12, is the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, a lovely Hispanic holy day and tradition. Holy Mary, mother of God, is believed to have appeared to a poor peasant Indian, Juan Diego and requested a church built in her honor. This brave, illiterate convert faced the wrath of the bishop and the scorn of many of his people to do the bidding of the lovely lady whose name he did not know.