Hello, Lovely Mom!

How are you?

I hope you are healthy and enjoying the month of December. It’s hard to believe we are just a week away from Christmas!

Have you been able to celebrate this magical season? Even if it’s just at home with your family? I know this year is hard and different from previous years. It’s our job to make the most of it, though. We can do this!

What are your family traditions? I’d love to read about them in the comments. Please share!

It’s so special and important to keep traditions. Along with faith, I believe they are the backbone of our families. Bob and I have established many of our own traditions over the course of our marriage, having children, and living in three different countries.

One custom my family of origin had once I was a little older was having homemade tamales on Christmas Eve. The wonderful Spanish-speaking congregation that was part of my church would bring us delicious, handmade tamales every December 24th, and it became a super special memory for me. There is nothing like unwrapping that warm, golden cornhusk to find a mouth-watering tamale inside. 

When Bob and I moved from Texas to Canada, we had to search for good Mexican food. We love our Tex-Mex, so it was important to us. Unfortunately, it was pretty scarce, so I learned how to make my own, and for many years now, that has been our traditional Christmas Eve dinner.

I make two or three kinds of enchiladas, homemade Spanish rice, black beans (which comes from our Venezuela days), chips, salsa, guacamole, and we serve Jarritos, Mexican or Texas-themed beer and/or margaritas, etc. And I still want to learn how to make my own tamales to add to our menu!

We have many other traditions, especially during the Christmas season. When the kids were younger, I would wrap 25 Christmas-themed picture books and put them in a basket near or under the Christmas tree. We would make hot cocoa and open one book every morning to read together on the couch. Such sweet memories!

Here are a few of our faves: The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (and don’t miss the adorable movie version), The Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree: An Appalachian Story, One Wintry Night, and The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey.

We also had an advent calendar every year, everything from chocolates to Legos. We also had special advent-themed books that we would read in the evenings.

Then there are the foods that became part of our celebrations. When the older kids were younger, I started making fudge and giving it as gifts. I also made a Spiced Tea mix and gave that as gifts. And then we discovered Gingerbread (the cake, not the crunchy cookie man)! Oh, wow. How many pans of Gingerbread have we made over the years?

These are all still precious favorite traditions in our home. They bring back warm, cozy memories and help create that special, distinct holiday atmosphere that everyone longs for and feels at home in. 

We take a family photo each year, usually on Thanksgiving Day. I order Christmas cards from Shutterfly to send to friends and family all over the country (and continent). I look so forward to getting cards from our family members and from the friends we have made over our lifetimes. We are crazy blessed with beautiful relationships.

Since living in Virginia, we started a new tradition of going to a Christmas tree farm to pick out and cut down our tree. We have been to several in our years here, but the last three out of four years, we’ve only had to go right down the road to a friend’s tree farm where we always find the perfect one, usually a gorgeous White Pine. Then we head home, put on some Christmas music or pop in a Christmas movie, and decorate to our heart’s content. 

I love seeing the ornaments we have collected over the years. A new tradition I started the last couple of years is to buy each of the kids their own ornaments to take with them when they move out on their own.

This year as we decorated, we watched my favorite Christmas movie, The Preacher’s Wife, with Whitney Houston, Denzel Washington, and Courtney B. Vance. In case you’re not familiar with it, it’s a more modern version of the 1947 movie, The Bishop’s Wife, (which I also love) and which was based on a book by the same title.

We love making Christmas cookies, Rolo Pretzel Delights, and Ginger Cookies and keeping hot spiced apple cider warming in a crock pot on the kitchen counter the entire month of December. 

On Christmas morning I make a big breakfast of Farmer’s Casserole, Christmas Coffee Cake, Pigs in a Blanket, a tray of fruit, along with hot Wassail, and plenty of coffee. Now that the kids are older, we taking our time to open gifts and spend time together around the Christmas tree. Instead of a large Christmas dinner, we make loads of appetizers and snacks to have the rest of the day.

In keeping with Bob’s family tradition, we often go to see a movie in the theater late Christmas afternoon. I’m not sure if that will be an option this year or not. (Has anyone been to a movie theater in the past eight months?!)

No matter if you can do the big, normal celebrations you have always experienced or if you have to scale down to a smaller version of Christmas this year, I pray you have a warm, wonderful time making treasured memories with your family.

Thinking of you,

Scarlett xo

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