Making Christmas important without the religion
Christmas is a religious holiday celebrating the birth of Jesus. It seems like there are two main things that get celebrated during Christmas. Jesus and Commercialism.
If your family is not particularly religious, can you enjoy Christmas without getting overly commercial.
It is easy to fall into the commercial trap, but it can be avoided.
Decorations
- Homemade paper chains can be wrapped around the tree or hung across the ceiling.
- Homemade paper snowflakes can be taped to the front window and make excellent decorations no matter which side of the window you are on.
- Homemade ornaments. We just hung ornaments on my parents’ tree last weekend. A very large percentage of the ornaments that we like are the ones we made when we were kids in school or at home. Most of the bought ornaments end up being used to fill in the empty spots.
- A lot of houses in the neighborhood are lit up like Vegas casinos. We have just a couple strands of lights around one of the trees in the front yard. Simple, makes the kids happy, and did not cost very much.
Traditions
- My wife and I buy an ornament together each year. We also let the kids each pick out an ornament. We make a big event out of the trip and the selection.
- Teach kids to buy/make presents for each other. Our kids are just getting old enough to start expecting presents so we decided this would be a good time to get them used to understanding that Christmas not being only about getting presents. We took them to the store several times until they were able to pick out a present for their sibling without picking out something that they wanted for themselves. Our daughter in particular seems to be excited about giving her present to her brother.
- Listening to traditional Christmas music and stories and also Christmas stories and music of their favorite characters. The classics are great but they might understand better if they see Clifford or Elmo celebrating Christmas.
- Spend time together doing crafts and playing in snow and doing special things during their time off from school. During the activities, you can talk about what you remember from the holidays when you were a kid.
The key to all of the activities above is that you make the empasis on spending time with each other and doing nice things for each other. The goal of Christmas should never be how many trees are under the tree no matter what your religious beliefs.
Tags: Christmas, kids, parenting, spending-time-with-the-kidsRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Spending time with kids
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