Christmas Traditions for the Traveling Family

When my children were very young, we moved away from most of our relatives in New Jersey to the "wilds" of Central New York. We wanted to spend Christmas with our families, so almost every holiday began with a four hour car ride to grandma's house. We packed the gifts, food, dog, clothes, boots and kids into our station wagon and left our house and Christmas tree behind.

The song, "Home for the Holidays" played on the radio as we traveled away from our home to my parents' or my husband's parents' or some other relative's house. As happy as we were to be seing our families in another state, we were a little sad to leave our own home for the holidays. We wanted to give our children some family traditions of their own to remember, not just a long car ride to grandma's. This is when we decided to designate the weekend before Christmas as our special family holiday time.

One nice thing about December in Central New York is that there is almost always snow on the ground. We started our family holiday weekend on Saturday by baking Christmas cookies and Babka, (a sweet Polish yeast bread) together and preparing a place for our tree. We all knew that our perfect tree would touch the ceiling!

On Sunday, we all dressed warmly and trekked out to the grove of evergreens on our farm where our three boys helped chose the perfect tree for our living room. In my memory, it was an old fashioned Christmas card picture as the boys pulled the toboggan through the snow wearing their bright red and blue coats and colorful knit hats. We took our time choosing just the right tree, not too short, not too skinny. The boys took turns with the saw, and then loaded the tree on our toboggan where they helped drag it back to the house. Our German shepherd, Taffy, always came along to help pick out the tree and loved to romp in the snow along side the sled as we came back to the house.

By the time we got home, we were all ready for hot chocolate in front of the fireplace while Christmas music played on our old stereo. I remember a particular favorite was a Gene Autry album of Christmas music for children. The best thing was, we knew all the words to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman, and could sing along.

The tree was always too big to fit in the living room! We stood it on the front porch to drip off while Bill and the boys trimmed off some of the lower branches and trunk until it was the right size to fit in the house. Our old farmhouse had a huge living room, but the tree always took up a good part of it. Somehow trees always look bigger inside than they do outdoors! We brought it in and got it set up in the tree stand. After the one disasterous year when the cat climbed it and tipped the over, we always wired the tree to the wainscoting so it wouldn't fall, no matter who climbed it.

Now Bill and the boys would go up to the attic and bring down boxes of Christmas ornaments and lights. While they were testing lights and getting everything out, I was busy in the kitchen fixing our special holiday party treats. Trays of homemade Christmas cookies and crackers, several kinds of cheese and sliced beef log were set out on pretty dishes. There was always a nice dish of picked herring which we all loved! A glass of wine was poured for the adults while the children got punch. Festive Christmas paper plates and napkins added to the party atmosphere

When the lights were on the tree, we all stopped to admire it while we had a toast to our family Christmas. Then we got around to decorating the tree, making sure that the Christmas decorations we made earlier in the month got a special place. Some years there were homemade gingerbread men wrapped in plastic wrap. Other times there were decorated pine cones or baked clay ornaments. There were always some homemade paper chains and some popcorn chains. We all enjoyed looking through the boxes of tree ornaments to find the previous years hand crafted ornaments, or special decorations made by the children's grandmothers. One special ornament, made by my mother, was a trio of felt reindeer sewn together. There were also some crocheted snowflakes and some of our favorite little wooden soldiers that we made years ago. We also saved all the decorations that the kids made in school each year.

Bill and I were sentimental about some glass ornaments that we purchased in 1960, the year we got engaged. They are scuffed and scratched. There's even a pheasant with a missing tail, but they all still decorate our tree each year. Later, we added decorations purchased in our travels and those given to us by friends. Our tree was never a decorator's delight, but it delighted us because so much of it had special meaning.

Christmas music played as we finally all sat down to enjoy the tree and the snacks, ignoring the mess of boxes and packing materials around us.

After dinner that night, we placed gifts under the tree. The kids were allowed to open one gift, which often turned out to be something they could play with on our car trip or a game the whole family could play.

We had other traditions that were part of Christmas with my parents, like our traditional Polish Christmas Eve dinner at my mother's which included sour mushroom soup and pirogies with 5 different fillings. But our new little tradition of decorating the tree together became a special family tradition that we continued to share with our three boys when they were grown and had children of their own.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Copyright ©2010 Stephanie Henkel