6 weeks ago I made the decision that I wanted to live this holiday season intentionally, and I sat down and made a list of all of the things that I felt were important to me and to my family to do this season. Last year I came away from the holidays feeling as if I allowed the general craziness of everything to get in the way of the traditions that I wanted to keep up with my family. And I knew that if I started early enough, made a plan and scheduled activities onto dates in my calendar- that I had a good chance to making this holiday season turn out differently. And I am so happy to say that it has.
I took the girls to see the Nutcracker…
I know that some Moms of little girls can’t wait for their daughter to be old enough so that they can have mani/pedis together. Or go shopping for clothes together. But for me, one of the things that I looked forward to doing with my girls- was taking them to see the Nutcracker ballet. I wanted them to be old enough to enjoy it, so that they wouldn’t be bored (and then maybe we could make it an annual tradition!), but young enough that they could feel the magic of it (although does anyone ever outgrow the magic of the Nutcracker?) I wanted them to have fancy frilly dresses to wear and I wanted us to go out for tea together first. All of this had been a dream of mine for a long time…. and this year, I finally made sure that it happened. This will be a memory that I will carry with me for the rest of my life!
We’ve made time to watch the holiday specials together as a family…
I absolutely adore all of the holiday claymation specials…. “Santa Claus is Coming To Town”… “Rudolph”…. “The Year Without A Santa Claus”…. and the other classic TV specials such as “Frosty”…. “A Charlie Brown Christmas”…. and “The Grinch”. But this year we also took the time to add some of the classic holiday movies to our Netflix queue, and have watched one every Saturday night since Thanksgiving. We fell in love with “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “Miracle on 34th Street.” Next up will be the original “A Christmas Carol.” But I know if I hadn’t plugged these into my calendar, we’d be watching re-runs on the Disney channel and new runs of the X-Factor all of time, and would have missed enjoying the holiday specials entirely.
We’ve driven around to look at holiday lights…
My kids take such pure joy in marveling how the heck people string lights up on these very tall pine trees that we see around town. They get excited if we see that a house up ahead has a holiday display all lit up. I forgot how magical holiday lights can be…. (of course the only down-side to this, is that they now think that we need to create a larger and better light display at our house!)
And this weekend we will bake and decorate gingerbread houses….
Something that I completely allowed to fall off of the list last year…. I didn’t want to let that happen again! So I purchased all of the candy decorations at the store this week, and tomorrow I plan to bake all of the house pieces. It felt so good this morning when my son asked me whether or not we were going to make gingerbread houses, that I could answer “yes”, and not feel it as a source of stress, or “one more thing that I need to do!”
So this whole-living-life-intentionally thing….. writing down what I intend to do, parsing it out in baby steps and assigning those steps to specific days really worked for me this holiday season. It makes me wonder what other things I could accomplish in my life if I approached say, the month of January by living intentionally.
Hmmmm…
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
So awesome Sharon! I can’t tell you how much I love the picture of the girls all dressed up – they are SO BEAUTIFUL! I can just imagine how happy they were that day and how special they felt. I, mother of one without a “real” job was not able to find the time to take Amy to the Christmas Spectacular (she went to see the Nutcracker wth her class) and have promised to take her next year (Yes, I have the perverbial big “L” firmly planted on my forehead). We did, however, watch It’s a Wonderful LIfe with ALL the girls (even a college freshman) over thanksgiving and it’s already been in my calendar for us to watch (I DVR’d it over Thanksgiving) Miracle on 34th Street. Last night Amy almost fell off her chair – literally – when while she was eatting dinner I said “Let’s move dinner into the family room and we can watch Frosty the Snowman”. She couldn’t believe i was serious. it was so much fun. Lastly, for anyone Jewish who loves Christmas Music – “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer” is a current favorite for Amy and me – you should hear us in the car on the way to the bus in the morning (yes, it’s on our iphone so we can play it whenever we want. Hey, it was only $.69)! Our new tradition is to put on the Sirius station Holly (regularly called Love – I think it’s 116 or 117) throughout the house while we put up the Chanukah decorations. My husband’s not a fan, but he knows this is a battle his girls will not let him win. When you’re Jewish, you have to be a little more creative. Amy asked that if when she gets older, if she adops a Christian baby, can they celebrate Christmas. I know how she feels. Don’t get me wrong, I love and am proud of being Jewish, but there’s nothing like Christmas music and the beautiful decorations to feed the soul….
Twitter: sharonmomof6
December 16, 2011 at 6:55 am
I think it is perfectly okay to embrace traditions that may not be from your own religious beliefs or culture, and love them fully for just what they are. It doesn’t make you any less Jewish to love to listen to Christmas music and see Christmas lights…. any more than it makes me less (insert whatever-the-heck heritage that I am) to absolutely adore making dumplings, decorating our home for the Chinese New Year, and giving our kids hong boa, and so on. Your faith is much deeper than decorations or music…. it is core to who you are. But you can still love things outside of your faith too.
I have a date with my 4 yo daughter to see the Nutcracker tonight! I purposely bought $5 tickets and plan on leaving at intermission just to give her a taste of the magic. See, I’m a mom with a plan too! Next year, she’ll probably be ready to watch the whole thing. That is a beautiful shot of you with the girls!
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Twitter: sharonmomof6
December 16, 2011 at 10:17 am
Oh that’s a great idea! She will be enchanted with the first half! And $5 tickets makes it easy to do! I hope that you have a great time!
I too love the Nutcracker and have seen it many times both as a child and even as an adult without a child to use as an excuse to being there. I love the NYC Ballet version but it is a little too long for my daughter yet. So the suggestion of only going for the first Act is a great idea. But here is another suggestion: for the past two years we have gone to a local production put on by a ballet school at a local theatre. There are dancers of all ages and abilities from the school and then they bring in a couple of pros from ABT to dance the Sugar Plum Fairy and her attendant. It is not as long as the “real” one in the City so some of the story/dances are abbreviated or omitted but it is perfect for 4 and 5 yr olds. There is plenty of the wonderful music and lots of dancing and the tree “grows” but just not as impressively as at NYC Ballet. It is a lovely production and there may be others like it out there for the smaller ones that can’t sit through a full length production. Of course having said all that I am really looking forward to the time when she will be able to go to the NYC Ballet version and I can watch her eyes get big as the tree grows – one of my favorite parts as a child or even now as an adult!