Sunday, December 27, 2009

An Atypical Christmas

Most years for Christmas I spend a few days putting up Christmas decorations, and a few days taking them down. This year, because of Ryan's shoulder surgery he was unable to be of assistance getting the decorations out of our attic, and because I do in fact value my life, I did not think it wise to risk it trying to get our heavy decoration boxes down unassisted. So we only had a Christmas tile thing I got at a Relief Society Christmas party and a stocking from my secrest sister (we do secret sisters in my bookclub at Christmas, which is fun).

Most years, in fact every year before this one, I have gone home for Christmas - even the years that we are to spend Christmas with our in-laws, I have always gone home for about a week soon after Christmas. This year I've stayed in Texas.

Two days before Christmas it was 75 degrees, and then I had my first white Christmas ever.

But the one constant that I have had this Christmas was having a Christmas Family. I am not really sure how the tradition started in my family, or when, but every Christmas for as long as I can remember my family has adopted another family to provide Christmas for. Since my family is so big now we don't always adopt the same family, but sometimes we do. This year Ryan and I still hadn't chosen a family the week before. I was feeling sad, having a hard time feeling like it was actually Christmas. But then the Sunday before we found our family. I went shopping on Wednesday, and had fun despite the traffic and crowds. Thursday we dropped the stuff off at the friend of our Christmas family that would take the stuff to them, and that was fun too. I didn't get to see the looks on the kid's faces as they opened the stuff, or even as things were dropped off. But just knowing that we got to help some people that are struggling enjoy their Christmas a little more made it feel like Christmas for me, and it felt good.

If you don't already have this tradition in your family I highly recommend it - it is my very favorite of all traditions!