I am a mother who knows what I celebrate. Part 1

I celebrate the birth, life, mission, atonement and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.  I talk of Christ, rejoice in Christ, and write of Christ that my children may know to what source they may look for a remission of their sins, for healing from pain, for strength beyond their own, for guidance and truth, for happiness and hope.

Several years ago, I started down a road of questioning all of my traditions.  There are many verses throughout the Book of Mormon that talk about the "false traditions of our fathers."  I wondered if I had any false traditions from my childhood, that I was passing on to my children.  I started looking at holidays and the traditions around those holidays.

What I learned took me on a journey and changed how I celebrate Christmas.


My mother made Christmas truly magical.  There were 10 children in our family, so our house was always bustling, and there were always children young enough to get into the magic.  It took 3 full days of hard work to clean the house and put up the decorations, right after Thanksgiving. All the regular wall decor,  and knicknacks were wrapped up into boxes and in there place we put snowmen, Santa Clauses, elves, reindeer, holly boughs, tinsel, ginger bread houses, mistletoe and of course a nativity.  The pink and blue hand towels were replaced with red and green.  There were Christmas lights, in some form or another in every room of the house.  A beautiful, real Christmas tree upstairs, and a fun one the children could decorate downstairs.   Most of December you could hear Mannheim Steamroller and Johnny Mathis' Christmas Album playing, you could smell the sweet spicyness of wasail in the crockpot, ready when you got home from school, or came in from the cold.   And I'm sure there was always a foot of snow ;-)

Every night we would read a different Christmas story.  The first one was The Last Straw.  It was just on plain typed paper, long before the beautiful picture book was published.  Then we would draw names for Pixies.  That was who we got to secretly serve that week.  And each week before Christmas we drew a new name.  I loved this tradition and always liked to make a big deal of doing something for my person every day.  I also would anxiously look on my bed for love notes, and treats from my pixie.  I remember one year there was a week when my pixie didn't come - the first day, nor the second, nor the third.  I was getting very disappointed. Being young, I think I let that disappointment show to my siblings, in hope that my pixie would get on the ball, I also tried all the harder to be an excellent pixie myself, doing a chore and leaving a love note.  Maybe an after school treat, too. 
Finally, on Friday I came home, with the faintest hope.  Before going inside to look though, I went out to the woodshed to check on a new batch of kittens, - our cats always belonged to me, and I loved to play with new kittens.  As I looked in the shed, the first thing I saw was a streak of red on one of the little white and grey fluffballs.  My first thought was "Oh no, somehow she has been hurt."  But as I lifted her out of the shed, I saw that it was a red ribbon tied around her neck. Attached was a piece of paper with "2. Look where you wash clothes."  It was in my oldest, teenage brother's handwriting. (We almost always figured out who our pixie was, but we never let on.)   This was a piece to a treasure hunt.  That was always considered the ultimate gift a pixie could do. It extended the surprise to the maximum.  I was ecstatic, as I ran into the laundry room and searched for the next clue.  I went around gathering the clues one by one, all around the house, until I was led to the microwave where a cup of hot chocolate and some cookies were waiting for me.  I enjoyed it, although I felt bad for having complained about a slacker pixie.  Really I had the best one!  And after I ate my treat, I had the fun of looking for the first clue.  The fun lasted even longer.

I remember writing Santa letters and giving them to Mom.  One year, I got to wondering, though. I remember writing a different letter to Santa, putting it in an envelope and mailing it off.  However, I never was sure if I had the right address, and therefore, I always believed my test had not really been valid.  Just because I got what I had put on the list I handed to Mom, didn't mean Santa wasn't real.  It just meant she had the right way of getting it to Santa, and I didn't.  I have often been told I am a little too trusting!  

I remember Christmas Eve driving home from our cousins house, and watching the sky, hoping I might see Santa's sleigh.  I had a very real belief.  I remember my Grandma Wood telling me a story of seeing Santa one Christmas Eve night when she was a little girl.

My mom had a little bendable rubber elf.  He moved around our house to random places on a shelf, or end table, or the bathroom counter.  He was Santa's special messenger.  He was always watching to see "who was naughty or nice."  My mom was way ahead of the now popular "Elf on the Shelf"  My mother could have written the book on how to make Christmas magical.

Now jump ahead several years to my first Christmas with my husband.  You will probably laugh at this.  But I actually, was very sad and disappointed that I had to acknowledge that Santa wasn't real, and the only presents I would get from him would have to be put under the tree myself. I believe they call this the disease of Entitlement, that my spoiled generation is so prone to.  I had been taught well enough to not act on those emotions of selfishness, but I cannot deny that I grappled with them.

The next year, I had a baby.  Oh excitement!  I could start trying to be the amazing mother, I had been shown.  I delved into the world of making Christmas magical.  We were on a college student budget mind you, and I had a husband wise enough to have taught me about interest - that we want to earn it, and not pay it, and therefore we must not spend that which we did not have.  So I had to be creative and resourceful, but Christmas would be celebrated and magical nonetheless.

Then, two years later, my life changed forever.  Something happened that made me start to question everything in my life.  I had to know what was real, what was truth.  I had to start living more completely according to that truth.

Continued tomorrow...