Blog This Challenge 24 - The Real meaning of Christmas

What does Xmas mean to you and your family?
Have you got some traditions?? 
What will you cook?! 
Who will you spend it with? 
Got a favourite Christmas memory? 
How are you decorating??

Christmas…..to me Christmas means family.  To Boy Child and Girl Child it seems to be about presents.  Particularly Girl Child.  You see at some point I had the brilliant idea of asking the children to show me in the brochures what they would be interested in for their birthdays or Christmas.  Since then girl child has taken to the whole marking things in brochures like a duck to water!

A lot of brochures arrived recently, which Girl Child has attacked with a blue pen.  This afternoon she brought me a particular brochure and said “Mum you have to look at this one.  The sale finishes tomorrow.” I think perhaps my little consumer has worked out I generally only buy stuff on sale.

Back on track to me Christmas means family.  Now family could be our little nuclear family just the four of us.  Or it could be like last year with the extended family - 26 people.   Either way, I prefer it when Christmas is relaxed. 

Food wise

When it’s just the 4 of us we do the whole hot baked meat and vegetables thing.  Mr E. is so much better at roasts then I am so in the fast he has often cooked the meat of Christmas eve and the vegetables on Christmas Day. 

We have baked ham, roast pork and baked turkey breast roll.  We also have normal ham. Dessert is Christmas cake or Christmas Pudding or fruit mince pies with custard. Sometimes we have had the Ice Cream Christmas cake instead of pudding / cake and custard.

Traditions

For us Christmas food really starts with me making Gluten free shortbread and fruit mince pies. Usually the shortbread is in Christmas shapes.  I really like the stars the best and I wish mine turned out as uniformly as these ones.

I decided when Boy Child was born that we should have our own Christmas traditions.  So one of those is that we (okay mostly just me) eat shortbread and mince pies while putting up and decorating the tree and later in December watching the 2 televised Carols by Candlelight.  Mr E. loves chocolate coated almonds so we always have those in the house as well for Christmas.

When I was growing up, Mum would not let anyone touch the Christmas ham until Christmas morning when it could be cut and you ate ham on toast for breakfast.  We have sort of continued that and generally have ham on toast or ham and eggs for breakfast.   But regardless of what Mr E. thinks I’m not precious about whether it gets cut early!

Santa comes to Boy Child and Girl Child.  They leave him some shortbread and mince pie and some milk.  The reindeers get a carrot or an apple.  Santa leaves a small gift for the children because he knows that they have family who will give them things.  The gift from Santa is put in a stocking or if it doesn't fit, Christmas tree decorations show the way from the stocking to the gift which is not far away.

The children have their own tradition of having chocolate advent calendar every year.  I think my mum started it a few years before she died and so now we continue it for them.

In the lead up to Christmas we often buy a gift or gift card for someone from the Giving Trees at the big stores.  We also (or sometimes instead) buy food and toys to give to the animals at the RSPCA shelter.  I hope that doing these things makes our children understand more about the joy of giving and of helping others.

Decorations

We have no specific decorating scheme.  It’s usually just “Okay kids you want to decorate here is the stuff.   Go for it!”  We have an artificial tree that is about 110cm tall with fibre optics so it has lights.  We have strings of beads in red and silver, we have little bells in various colours and other baubles.   We currently have a star for the top of the tree.  Of course I can’t forget to mention the the hand made decorations that have come home from day care and school.

Our tree often ends up overly decorated on one side but is beautiful because the children (well mostly Girl Child) put lot of effort into in the decorations.  I am hoping we can get away with not listening to Christmas Carols in the car until about February.  In my experience is only so much Hi 5 Santa Clause is coming, Santa Claus is coming you can take!

Favourite Memory

This isn't really my favourite memory but it does explain why the presents don’t go out under the tree too far before Christmas.  One year I have no idea why but I seemed to be spending a lot of time at home alone.  So I managed to open up my Christmas Present from my family interstate and discovered I was getting a Donkey Kong game.  If you are old enough you might remember them - here’s a picture from Wikipedia:

Anyway I opened the present and got the game out and played it most days for probably the two weeks before Christmas. On Christmas morning I had to pretend to be surprised at my gift when I opened the present. I still have it by the way.

At this point I don't know whether we are staying home from Christmas or going to see family interstate.  As long as we are together, safe and healthy it’s really all that matters.

Thanks for reading my first Blog This challenge.  I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did reminiscing!