K 'playing Advent' complete with pipe cleaner candles! Oh how I love the creativity of that sweet girl o' mine!
'St. Lucy' cake
{semi-related photos from the Advent Fair I mentioned last week}
More random musings from me - thoughts on how my own family celebrates. Absolutely no judgement on how anyone else celebrates! In fact, I would love it if you helped me out and shared yours.
Have you seen this? Please go check it out, what beautiful inspiration it is! It really made me stop and think as I panicked over C's sweater tonight. I have thought about going gift less but didn't know how/if I could do it. Could you? K has brought this up before, herself (in her own way), and I never really knew how to respond. I'd say that our gifts to each other are symbolic gestures of gifts to Baby Jesus, but really now, would He really want a hand knit sweater or a Mama-made warm blanket for his bed? Well, perhaps those creature comforts would be nice but that's not the point. What more can we/should we be doing? Would my children be able to give up the gift giving tradition... or would I be the one who has the hardest time? These thoughts weight heavy on my heart right now.
Our Christmas gifts are a small part of the day itself. I like to limit our children's gifts to three each (one for each wise man) handmade by myself or others, and we are very grateful that our families usually ask what our little ones really need, and then get them that. This helps to keep the focus on the day itself, and it also helps to control what comes in the house limiting clutter (and helping out our planet and everyone on it - have you watched The Story Of Stuff? It's an eye opener) I thought we were doing pretty good but after reading the post I mentioned above, I am feeling quite different. Our Christmas no longer seems simplistic to me, but the very opposite.
We actually only started celebrating Christmas a few years ago. Well, I mean as a family. Kevin and I both grew up celebrating it. We both didn't want to do the Santa Claus thing (nothing against it, we just didn't want to do it for our own family) and we didn't really know of any other way to do Christmas so we just didn't. Then when K was 6 months old I discovered Steiner's teachings and Waldorf education. As I read every little thing I could get my hands on I discovered the festivals celebrated in Waldorf schools as well as the importance of rhythm - specifically yearly rhythm like the seasons, birthdays and holidays. That's when I learned about the real Saint Nicholas and also when we decided to start celebrating Christmas. Huh, hows that for our Christmas history in a nutshell?!
I don't know. I am just thinking out loud here. What do you all think? How do you celebrate whichever meaningful holiday you may have coming up? Speaking of that, I would love to see/hear what all of you celebrate and the traditions you follow for those celebrations. I love the diversity of them all, and that we all celebrate everything in our own way.
This I do know - Christmas will stay the same this year, but I think I foresee transformations ahead!
Phew, well I planned on just posting pictures of a recent adventure tonight but that didn't happen now did it? I decided to carry on and on about myself and thoughts in my head. Sorry about that. Sometimes just getting things out there really helps me to sort through my thoughts, though. Pictures tomorrow!
Last chance to enter to win a pocket gnome from Bright Life Toys here!
