My little one has a book called “What is Christmas”.
Growing up as a young child, Christmas for me was about the presents. We would open our presents on Christmas Eve. Go to my mamaw and papaws house, gathering with family in a house full of 50 or more. Eating too many homemade Christmas goodies. Eating Docks pizza. Putting on a Christmas play. Having a visit from Santa Claus. Exchanging names and gifts. Playing a game where everyone’s name goes in a cap and someone calls out the names one by one. The person who’s called goes and picks a gift off the table from a mountain of gifts. It’s usually some cheap little gift that can be useful in every day life or not really useful at all and finds it’s way back to the table the next year. But it’s the excitement of going to get a gift. I remember my mom and dad would bring both myself and my brother one present to open. Then the next day we would stay home and enjoy all of our presents from the day before.
As I got older, I took more joy in getting presents for everyone else. We would continue to open our gifts on Christmas Eve. But at some point, my grandparents passed away and no one had the time to gather together anymore for our biggest family Christmas tradition. 💔 So we would do our little Christmas. And around this time it was probably that I learned what the meaning of Christmas really meant. Even though I knew of it all my life, I never really KNEW you know.
Now, as I’m a mom I love to try to make the memories and magic happen for my Littles. It was always a transition for me to get up in the middle of the night before Thanksgiving and put up the Christmas tree. I would put the green pieces together, and go back to bed and decorate it the next morning while mom made Thanksgiving dinner. This year, I did this for my little one. And boy howdy, was it fun carrying each piece of this heavy 7 ft tree up the stairs from the basement. But when I woke up my almost 3 year old Thanksgiving morning and saw him light up as soon as he saw the tree, it was worth it. Seeing him point that finger saying I’m going to get my ekavator so I can decorate the tree brings a smile to my face. And him pointing and naming each of the colors of all the lights. These moments make it worth it. We put our Christmas lights up outside a few days later. Extravagant by no means. But that was another magical moment. Watching his face light up in amazement. We’ve been having Friday Night movie nights with popcorn, cheese and chocolate up until Christmas. We wrote our letter to Santa. My little boy, included that he wants everything for Christmas and even included a note to bring some for baby sissy who can’t write yet. Then the elf came and took it and left candies, orange slices and jelly beans. We set aside a day to go see Christmas lights, bake and decorate Chrstmas cookies. Watching him so meticulously and patiently trying to decorate the cookie and then being so overly generious with the sprinkles.
That’s the moments and memories I want to remember. Hot chocolate nights which somehow is almost every night.
And reading Christmas stories and books before bed. Or even mornings of Snowman pancakes.
Sometime the weekend before Christmas we’ll open our stockings. On Christmas Eve, we’ll open our presents from each other and on Christmas Day there’ll be a couple more presents under the tree from Santa. These presents will be something typical and simple. Because everyone knows that Santa has to deliver presents to boys and girls all over the world. So he needs the parents to help him out when they can afford to. And I don’t want any child to ever feel bad that Santa didn’t get them something super nice and expensive. So all the pricy presents will be from us. And on Christmas we’ll end the day at my husband’s mamaw’s house.
These are all some nice traditions of Christmas for us. But it’s not the reason for Christmas. Christmas is about Jesus Christ. The son of God. Born in a manger.
The candy canes are nice. The Christmas cookies are precious. And Santa and the presents are good too. But our savior is the greatest blessing and present that we have and could ever be given. And that is the reason and that is Christmas.
Addie And Me Treasures 
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