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Keeping the Holiday Simple, but still making it special

by Mimi Jenkins -- Being Savvy Atlanta

Holidays are all about spending time with your family, right?  Making long trips to see grandparents or cleaning until your fingers bleed because you'll have a house full of guests.  Right?

Not in this house.  I love spending time with my family and with my husband's family. I do.  I really do.  And it's not that I don't want guests for Christmas, or I don't want to go anywhere... It's just not always possible for us to travel or for our families to travel.  We used to make an effort to fly to Michigan or England for the holidays.  And we have had my parents and my in-laws here as well, but it's started to be a bit more hassle and costly than it's worth at the moment.

The year Sam was born we spent our first holiday with no extended family.  We had a 6-week old baby.  We were NOT going anywhere.  My parents had just spent Thanksgiving with us and were off to spend Christmas with my sister.  My in-laws had been over to visit just before Sam was born and they couldn't afford another trip from England.  So we had it alone; just the four of us.  I was a bit nervous because having grandparents and cousins around makes the holidays so exciting!  I wasn't sure how we would make that Christmas just as special without the extended family.

I have to tell you, it was one of the best Christmases I'd ever had.  That was the Christmas we started most of our current "Christmas Traditions."  We had to do something to make it special for the boys and we found ways to do just that.

On Christmas Eve, we wake up and put on the Norad Santa Tracker and watch Santa deliver presents all around the world.  We realized the benefit of this last year when a friend of Josh's from school told him there was no Santa -- that the parents were Santa.   Josh said he knew is friend was wrong because he'd watched Santa on the computer.   We also try to get out of the house a bit.  It helps living in Georgia because the weather is usually nice enough for us to hit a playground, or kick a ball around at the park.  Anything to keep the kids entertained!

We don't eat out very often, but every Christmas Eve we go out to dinner.  Nothing fancy -- we have a seven and four year old -- but it's fun.  It keeps the kids occupied and we can try and focus their attention on something other than the big pile of presents or what they'll be getting from Santa.

After dinner, we drive around our neighborhood looking to look at the Christmas lights.  Some of the houses in our neighborhood really put on great shows so the boys love to do this.  Of course we have to drive by all their friends' houses and see their light displays too.


We come home, spread out the Magical Reindeer Food; write our letter to Santa and put it right next to the cookies and milk for him. 

I would love to go to Midnight Mass, something I loved as a child and grown up, but the kids are still too young to stay up that late.  Usually, we sing Christmas Songs around the nativity. 

Then before bed we read  The Night Before Christmas. 

I'd love to say that the kids stay in bed until 8:00 and give us time to sleep in too, but, alas,  that is not the case.  The boys are usually up early and Christmas morning is no exception. 

We open stockings, play with the "Father Christmas"/Santa gift and have our traditional Christmas morning breakfast.   We open a few more presents and play with them.  We try, and I mean really try, to stretch the presents out as long as possible.  We usually watch one of our new DVD's or play games in the evening. 

We hold 2-3 small presents back for Boxing Day, December 26th.  When Rich was growing up in England, they would visit friends and relatives on Boxing Day and exchange small gifts with them then, so we've incorporated it into our holiday rituals.  They are just small gifts like chocolate or books or a puzzle, but it helps to make the holidays last a bit longer.

While I love spending time with extended family and being together on Christmas, there is something strangely liberating about not worrying about other people, their schedules, what they want to do.  When we have no family around, we eat when we want, and what we want.  We can make last minutes adjustments in our plans and be spontaneous. Our focus is very much on our little family and what we want. It's worth doing every now and again.

Next year, we've been summoned to Michigan to spend Christmas with my family.  And I'm sure one of these years we may have to make the flight to England to spend the holidays with Rich's family.

But this year, we'll be solo again and I am really looking forward to it.