Christmas for our family has always been about spending time with friends and family, celebrating American traditions like decking the halls and singing carols, giving gifts and general spreading the love. Shawn and I are not religious, in fact not Christians, and have not felt like our boys were old enough to understand religion quite yet so we've only touched on the subject as we've deemed appropriate... in bits and pieces.
This year, my mom decided that the boys needed to learn about her Christian heritage and her reasons for the season. She wanted to share the story of Jesus and St. Nick so the boys would understand that side of her. Today the boys received an advent calendar that had a daily treat (in the form of chocolate), a Precious Moments nativity set and some books on the "First Christmas" (not the pagan version but the Christian version) and St. Nicholas ("the original Santa Claus") from her.
Shawn and I took advantage of this opportunity to dip a little deeper into the religion conversation to help our boys understand some of our differences and give them more to think about. Our stand has always been that we want them to be tolerant of everyone's beliefs, not ignorant of the differences between the religions, understand where religions come from and why, while allowing them to choose what, if anything, they'd like to put their faith in. We feel it'll mean more to them to come into their faith, if any, on their own... rather than be forced to believe what we do, or what their grandparents do. We want them to question, ponder and eventually decide on their own when they're old enough to fully comprehend what religions, god(s) and dogma really is. Our role is to help them gather information and answer questions that we can, as well as help them find answer to the questions we can't answer.
Anyway, our conversation tonight was about the Christian religion and the background of some of the traditions and songs that our culture has adopted. We pointed out that a lot of the carols that we hear during the Holiday season have Christian backgrounds. One example was the song "Do You Hear What I Hear?".
We've frequently sang this song and it's a favorite of the boys because they like to shout the answer to the questions in the song. For example:
"Do you hear what I hear?" ~ the boys shout "A SONG!"
"Do you know what I know?" ~ they shout "A CHILD!"
You get the point...
Tonight, Gavin was feeling a little silly and completely not interested in the religion conversation we were having (though Tyler did seem to put a lot of thought into the whole thing). Gavin made up his own verse:
"Do you smell what I smell?" ~ to which he shouted "A FART!"
.... and promptly burst into an uncontrollable laughter that was so contagious we were all in almost tears by the time dinner was finished.
I s'pose we'll have to pick up that conversation later...
Stockings hung by the chimney... next to the Santas that were made by my Grammy. They used to adorn the mantle at my mom's house. When she downsized, I inherited a few.
Our old artificial tree with even older ornaments.
Various stuffed animals and carousel horses from when I was a girl.
New ornaments, too.
Snowmen everywhere!
These are one of my favorites.
A wall hanging in the foyer.
We even decorate the house plants!
