Kevin's Watch

We're getting close to that time of the year, and I thought it would be interesting to see what types of things everyone does.

We typically decorate a Christmas tree the weekend after Thanksgiving. Growing up, I always had a real tree, but recently we've gone artificial, and I have to say, I like it. Much more convienient and much less messy.

We do small presents in stockings with candy for St Nick's, which is tonight (which means I have to buy some candy on the way home....). I never did a seperate St Nick's day growing up, but my wife did, and so we do this now. We've been threatening our son that St Nick will bring him reindeer poop in his stocking if he doesn't behave. He's aware that the threat doesn't carry much weight, and thinks its a darn funny idea.

We have always set up a nativity scene under the tree. When I was younger, it was an older, hand painted wooden set, probably from the 50s. After Mrs Root and I got married, we had a stylized silver set. And now we have a Fischer-Price Little People set, for the Rootling.

Becuase I frequently have to work on holidays, we've never had set traditions on any given day - we'd end up missing things every couple of years. But we always do get to see both Mrs Root's family and my own sometime around the holidays. Usually we travel to them, but this year, with Mrs Root's pregnancy (only 4 weeks to go! ) we've decided that traveling might not be a good idea, (delivering away from home...ugh...) and any one who wants to see us can come to us. So we've got one day where her folks are spending the day with us, and then the weekend after Christmas my folks and brother and his wife are visiting. We'll probably have large dinners both of those days.

Oh, and at work, we do a secret Santa thing - everyone randomly draws a name and you give that person small little gifts secretly for a few weeks, followed by a slightly larger gift nearer to Christmas time. It really does make things fun at the office.


So, anybody else? Oh, and please don't feel like I'm looking for Christian-only themed celebrations here. I'm interested in hearing what, if anything, our members of different faiths (or no faith) do around this season.

While Hanukkah is a very minor festival on the Jewish calendar, I'll admit I do get swept up in the gift giving aspect of it for Beorn. We light the Hanukkiah each night for the eight nights at sunset, put an electric one in our window so our neighbors can partake of the joy of the miracle of light, eat latkes and sufignyot (jelly doughnuts), and open one gift each night.

For my Father-of-Love, we do a secular Chr-stmas at his house. But, this year it appears we won't be seeing him due to schedule conflicts.

I think I'll still fix my standing rib roast on the 25th though. It's the one time of year I do fix it...

Oh whew...

Here goes...

Christmas is my favorite time of year. We have many things we do beginning right after Thanksgiving. The first thing we do is go out into the woods and find the perfect tree. It usually goes up the first weekend in December (the weekend after World AIDS Day). We also find little trees that we decorate and place on Stephen, Isaiah, Lynne, Zia and this year my father's resting places.

We help organize "Angel Giving Trees" in the community, the kids love doing this. They each pick a tag, 12 in all...we then go SHOPPING, the kids get so excited about this part. We then help organize all the gifts from other donors and start wrapping. By the 20th, if there are still tags on the trees, Russ and I usually gather them up and go shopping again. I am also in charge of making sure all the people inflicted with HIV/AIDS in the community get all they need for the Holidays as well, (I actually do this all year long, but Christmas is extra special requiring extra special needs). We also volunteer at the local food bank and help collect items and distribute them. On Christmas Eve day, we DELIVER everything to everyone. It makes for a very long day. Christmas Eve night, we gather together and watch The Nativity Story, sing Christmas Carols around the piano and then at midnight, one of us reads from Luke, this year, it will be Tristan.

Christmas Day, ah well, it is complete and utter chaos. The kids, of course, are opening and throwing wrapping all over the place. There is shouting and laughter and jumping about...all videotaped. We then gather together outside by Stephen, Isaiah, Lynne, Zia and now my father's resting places to pray, sing songs, and offer up our memories of them. We then shout out our welcome to the Saviour and praise His name as the sun rises.

Then, the rest of my morning and part of the afternoon is spent in the kitchen. At dinner, we go around the table and each member of our family offers a special memory or something they are thankful for. We then...EAT. After dinner we bring out the cake and sing happy birthday to Jesus. Then there is more singing and merry making until late in the evening...

It's a busy time, a chaotic time...and I would not change a minute of it.

On December 26th...I sleep all day

Wow, I'm tired after just reading all of that!

We don't do anything as elaborate. We put up our artificial tree the weekend after Thanksgiving, and my daughters (now 7 and 4) have a fun time helping me hang the ornaments. I have to work Christmas this year (but only a 6 hour shift so not too bad.) I'm off Christmas Eve though. We go to my father-in-law's on Christmas Eve for presents, then we have our main presents on Christmas Eve morning. Since I'm working, my family is waiting on me for Christmas Dinner. The good thing about working is that I don't have to go to my mother-in-law's (WOO-HOO! )

We go out as a family and find a tree bring it home and put all the decorations on. We have hot chocolate and music and sing along with the music as we do this. We also decorate the outside of the house, taking down the 'fall' decorations and putting up the 'winter' and Christmas decorations. (This comes along with the big leaf cleanup that we have because we have so many HUGE trees.)

The weekend before Christmas my family gets together at one of the familys houses (depending on who is hosting) and we have a big meal and fellowship while we allow the kids to open gifts from the other family members. This year my family is hosting and we are very excited to be able to have everyone at our house for dinner and fellowship.

Through our county govt we 'adopt' a needy family (or two depending on whether we can afford it) and we go out as a family to buy the gifts for the adopted family. My kids have to work to earn money to buy christmas gifts but have to use part of that money to buy one gift each for the adopted kids. (We will be doing that this weekend)

On Christmas morning I get up early and cook breakfast before the kids get up and then after everyone has eaten breakfast we sit around the fire and open gifts one at the time.

As the girls have gotten older, and as we have moved away from celebrating Christmas to celebrating Yule, our traditions have morphed somewhat.

In the old days, we would sign, stuff and seal the holiday cards over Thanksgiving weekend; they would go into the mail that next week. I'd then bake the first batch of cookies -- gingerbread houses/boys/girls/kitties -- and we'd sit at the kitchen table and decorate the crap out of 'em. (I gave that up a couple of years ago, after Batty made an anatomically correct gingerbread boy. ) We would usually wait until mid-month to put up the tree, because we always drove out to a Christmas tree farm and did the Paula Bunyan thing and cut our own. I *much* prefer a real tree. Then more baking -- a total of maybe five or six kinds of treats. (I always give my bosses treats for Christmas, on the theory that: 1) high-powered lawyers likely won't take the time to make their own, and 2) handmade stuff would mean more than some mass-produced crap they could buy for themselves.) We always take in one concert -- usually the Washington Revels -- and often there would be a Girl Scout service project (we delivered presents for the Northern Virginia AIDS Ministry for a couple of years).

We would always open one gift on Christmas Eve (following *my* family tradition) and then Santa would descend overnight and fill the stockings and bring the big gifts.

A few years ago, acknowledging that none of us is Christian any more, we moved the celebration to the winter solstice. Every year, the girls try to convince me to keep the open-one-present-the-night-before thing going, and every year I have to tell them that there's no such thing as Solstice Eve. Last year, as we were going to be at my mom's for Christmas, I broke down and bought a small pre-lit tree. It's convenient and it's way less messy and it smells like PVC vinyl. I'm thinking about going back to a real tree this year.

The girls now play elf and help fill the stockings, which is a little ridiculous when you think about it. Methinks the stocking tradition is about to die a merciful death....

Oh, and this year the Revels' last performance is before the girls will be home from college, so instead we're going to a concert of Czech Christmas music on Christmas Eve.

One more thing: I always make a big dinner for the big day, and the menu too is in flux as the girls have gotten older. My mom always made a turkey. I could never see making another turkey after we'd just had one at Thanksgiving, so I've been searching for an alternative. One year we had lamb, which I thought was only okay; haven't done that since. For several years I made roast pork, but then Magickmaker quit eating red meat. Last year I did Cornish game hens, which turned out pretty well. So this year it's either Cornish hen again, or roast chicken.

ali wrote

Last year, as we were going to be at my mom's for Christmas, I broke down and bought a small pre-lit tree. It's convenient and it's way less messy and it smells like PVC vinyl. I'm thinking about going back to a real tree this year.

Yeah, the scent is a little different... I forgot to mention we light a pine-scented candle in the room.....

My wife and I get a real tree sometime early Dec, possibly next week. I too love the real tree, I would miss the smell of pine. (candles are cheating )

We used to have Christmas party amongst our friends, but 2 years ago we bought this house, and have been lax. We're trying to get a tradition amongst our friends this year, trying to think of what to do (we're mostly in the newborn, young kids age, so have to plan for the kids now).

Christmas Eve, we serve in nursery at our church, then head to her parents for dinner and gifts. Christmas morn its just us (now w/14 month old Tyler) exchanging gifts, taking our time. Then head down to my parents for dinner and gifts. Usually day after we go down to Maryland for my mom's family. My grandparents now have 8 great-grandkids, so its a big deal, lots of people and kids. Its a great family, my wife loves the time as much as I do. She's become close friends w/a few of my cousins, tho they live in Md and we see them only few times a year.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, and whatever else I missed to all!

Yeah, the candle is one way to get around the eau de chemical. I also have some balsam fir-scented incense. This year I found some heavily-cinnamon-scented pine cones at Kroger in Roanoke over Thanksgiving weekend, so I've got those in bowls around the house to smell up the place a little.

I wussed out and put up the fake tree today. I was decorating the balcony and decided I might as well get it all over with at once. I still need to get a wreath for the front door, but everything else is basically done. Now I'm listening to all of the holiday CDs I've bought over the years, with an eye toward getting rid of the ones I don't like.

Just went shopping for an X-mas tree. After browsing for 30 minutes we couldn't find one my wife liked , and Prebe jr. thought they were all too small, even though one of the problems was that 9 in 10 wouldn't fit in our living room....

So, I guess I'll just have to pick one up on my way home from work durring the week.

Other than that, the first batch of Danish butter cookies are done. I'm saying the first batch, because they NEVER last untill X-mas day.

I'll be shopping for "finker" during next week: a stew with pretty much everything that was once inside a pig, spiced up with prunes, apples and thyme. An east Danish speciality. It's always funny to se the buchers face when I ask for pork kidneys.