December already? Advent greetings

After the excitement of Thanksgiving company, Advent snuck up on me. I’ve been scrambling to find the Advent wreath, buy new candles, collect the things scattered in the move - prayer book, Jesse tree ornaments, nativity, - and to recollect my Christmas disposition. Every year, my husband and I start the season with a discussion about how to avoid the frenetic last minute shopping and the money hemorrhage and instead capture some of a peaceful Advent spirit. We’ve tried to incorporate some penitential practices like giving up sweets – hard for our weak wills when confronted with weekly parties and cookie exchanges. We tried decorating for Advent: purple ornaments on the tree, waiting to put up lights, but usually we forget to trade the purple for red until after we return from holiday trips. We’ve incorporated a few Advent traditions: a Jesse tree, a paper chain with a prayer intention written on each link, moving Mary and Joseph and the wise men around the house until they reach the manger, adding blessed hay to the nativity, having a little Advent wreath lighting ceremony on Sundays, etc.

But every year we end up cutting these practices short to take our annual holiday trek to see family. And every year we debate the merits and detractions of staying with the grandparents for Christmas instead of having our own immediate family Christmas celebration.

When the older kids were little, I thought it would be boring to be home with just a couple toddlers on Christmas morning. And back then both of us had younger siblings still living at home. But now all the siblings are married, and some of them are bucking the “gather at Grandma’s” tradition in order to do their own thing. I feel a little cowardly – do I lack the courage to stay at home with my own kids? Am I selfish in wanting the older generation around to bolster my Christmas spirit?


I do love being with the extended family for Christmas, and the kids do, too. They want both to have Christmas at home and with the cousins, but distance has always been a deterrent to this solution. So far the joy of being together with extended family has outweighed the inconvenience of travel and the prickliness of being crammed into a house full of too many bodies with various expectations. My big fear is that the when the kids grow up, they won’t want to come to our home for Christmas because they don’t have memories of Christmas with us. But then again, maybe that will liberate them to celebrate with their own families. With the rootlessness of our lives as a military family, I wonder if they’ll ever find more of a place to associate with “home” and “Christmas” than their grandparents’.


Yesterday while walking with a couple of other moms from the school, one of whom is from Columbia, this topic came up. The mom from Columbia rarely gets to visit her family because of the distance and expense. But she misses the experience of growing up in a multi-generational family. Although my grandparents didn’t live with my family growing up, they were close enough to be present at our birthdays, sports events, holiday celebrations, Sunday dinners, etc. As an adolescent, I feared letting the grandparents down – their disapproval was a great deterrent to misbehavior. I hope that my own children feel connected enough to their grandparents to desire as strongly their approbation.


At least, we truly observe a penitential practice when we load all the kids, the dog, and the gifts into the car to drive about 2500 miles.