Giving Thanks Day 8 ~Thankful for Traditions

 Today I am thankful, and truly grateful for traditions.  Yesterday I posted a picture of one of our Christmas trees that we left up all year long.  We didn't intend to leave the tree up all year long, it just sort of happened.  It started off innocently enough, we always take our family Christmas photo in front of the Christmas tree each year. We usually take it in January after the hustle and bustle of the season is over and just before we take the tree down.  This year, things were busy with the boys in Cub Scouts, Odyssey of the Mind and dealing with the damage at our beach condo....and each month the tree was up, but no picture.  By March it seemed pointless to take one, the weather was warm, and spring flowers were emerging.  Who wants to put on a Christmas sweater and take a picture then?  I thought about my Grandma Cooper who had left her Christmas tree up all year long...it was a tradition I don't know how or when it started....but she always left her tree up in her formal living room in the front of the house.  So, this year I decided to leave the tree up in her honor.  I wondered if I was going to have to dust the tree, worried if the lights would work, and then there were the puzzled looks and giggles of friends and family when they would see or hear that my tree was still up.  Yesterday I turned the tree on....and know how the tradition may have started for my Grandma.  It's a lot of work getting the trees decorated and the house set up for Christmas.  Especially when you love Christmas so much and with each little thing you put out the kids eyes light up with excitement.  My grandma no doubt tirelessly decorated her home and kept things up so that kids never lost their sense of wonder.  It made me think about traditions, the many we started and some we've continued over the years.  We hang a pickle on the tree each year, the first one to find it gets a surprise.  We have an advent calendar (my mother would buy us one with the chocolate treats in them that we'd open each day)...and now we have a wooden one that has little toy surprises in them.  We have a Christmas Dinner at our house early in December for all our friends and family.  We would get a pink peppermint pig each year to enjoy after dinner with our friends and family.  We go to Disney during the holidays as often as we can, because it's even more magical decorated for Christmas.  We decorate our trees listening to Christmas music (a tradition that started with my mom and I hanging ornaments on her "fragile" tree...scratchy albums dusted off and played on a very old stereo that even had an 8 track tape deck on it), We play CD's of Christmas music now, but I will always be fond of the albums (and may have to search online to find them to play on our record players).  We hang ornaments we've made, ornaments from places we've traveled or visited (recalling our memories as we hang them on the tree), and angel ornaments for those that have passed on (honoring and remembering our treasured memories with each one), and special ornaments that once hung on our parents Christmas trees.  We have themed trees, and the boys love the ornaments that "do things" like play music or have motion.  They look forward to going to Hallmark to pick out a new ornament to hang on our tree. We started a tradition of collecting nutcrackers and add  one or two to our collection each year.   The boys look forward to setting them up (and playing with them).  We set up a train board with trains that Santa has sent the boys when they were little...and put our Polar Express Train under our biggest tree.  There is nothing like the sound of a kid's train and seeing a little ones eyes light up looking at all the houses with their lights glowing of a Norman Rockwell Christmas Scene displayed on the train table.  My dad always had a train out with Christmas houses and he even has a train room, filled with the sounds of Christmas!  We read Twas the Night Before Christmas on Christmas Eve and spend the day watching our favorite holiday movies A Christmas Story, It's A Wonderful Life, A Christmas Carol, A Miracle on 34th Street, and ending with the Polar Express.   We bake chocolate chip cookies especially for Santa, and my little "elves".  My mom and I would bake in a frenzy for an entire day to make a box of treats to give our family and friends...the smells of peanut butter/chocolate fudge, mini cheesecakes, snicker doodles, chocolate chip cookies, covered pretzels would fill the house and expand many a waistline!  We decorate the yard with inflatables and light displays....and always a Nativity. My dad has always decorated our yard and makes it a Winter Wonderland that people come from all over to see.  We have purchased things for his yard and I've painted countless Disney Christmas wooden cutouts that he displays with pride.   We look forward to putting something new in our yard and seeing neighbors drive by and stop with their kids to watch the lights, see the displays and hear the music.  And speaking of the Nativity, it is a special moment to bring out the Manger scene and the kids take turns on who places baby Jesus in the manger.  We started the tradition for our family, my parents, brother and sister's families with the Elf on a Shelf....which has brought so much joy to the little ones over the years.   Every year at Thanksgiving our Elves return and provide joy and mischief to all the kids in our family.  We started a tradition of going to the ICE Show at the Gaylord Hotel each year and the boys look forward to seeing the sculptures each year.  We've been going since 2009 and it is something we look forward to when we go home to visit family and friends. We have a tradition of getting pictures taken each Christmas, with Santa and display each years pictures near our fireplace.  We started a tradition of going to historical places over the holidays and we look forward to going to a Candlelight service as the Christmas Story being shared between Christmas Carols.  We started a tradition years ago at my moms house when I wanted the boys and their cousins to make a Gingerbread house and decorate it. We bought a kit and my mom said "they are going to make a huge mess" and I said "that's the point".  I'll never forget their first house they all made and my mom sitting there holding all the walls up tirelessly as the frosting was drying.  And now each year she gets each one their very own Gingerbread house to decorate (and we assemble them first before decorating them, lesson learned from that first comical Gingerbread house).   I am thankful I left my Christmas Tree up all year, it reminds me of traditions started years ago with my Grandmother, traditions my parents started, and ones our family has started.   Each year at Christmastime, as we get our "Totes" of decorations out, we open those traditions filled with nostalgia and unleash a flood of memories and we get wrapped up in happiness of the season.   Especially at this time of the year, we are thankful for our traditions both old and new and we are blessed to have them....Now I want to get out the rest of our decorations, I am in the "spirit" of the season after thinking of our traditions...and I am sure as I open the totes this season there are some I've forgotten to mention, and there will be some that may start this season...and some that will end at some point...but I hope that my little men will cherish them as much as I do!