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Musical Holiday Traditions

by Beth Hoffman -- Being Savvy Washington DC

We are a musical family.  My husband is happiest with a guitar in his hands and I tend to sing all day long without even noticing that I am doing it.  The children seem to be taking after us.  They both love their father's guitars and the piano, my three year old daughter sings and dances from the moment she wakes up in the morning until she falls asleep at night, and even the baby is starting to clap and bang in rhythm.  This makes for a pretty constant cacophony in my house, but it also gives us a chance to add to the set of holiday traditions that we are gradually building up around our family.

This year, my daughter learned several of the kid-friendly Christmas and holiday songs like "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" and "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" along with poems about snowmen and bells and snow.  On Christmas Eve, I plan to beg me mother to play the piano to accompany my daughter singing some of her favorite songs.  The idea of a family sing along seems so sweetly innocent and such fun that I am hoping it will become a family Christmas Eve tradition, along with decorating sugar cookies and eating so many of them that nobody eats any dinner.

But the thing I am most looking forward to is videotaping my daughter singing "Jingle Bells" in front of the Christmas tree.  I recorded her doing it last year, and plan to do it again, adding in her brother as soon as he can talk, every year for as long as she will stand for it.  I think it will make a wonderful keepsake for me, and someday for her, to be able to watch her grow and change and to build a new holiday tradition.