As my butcher informed me last night – ‘Sara – you do know that Christmas is only two weeks away, right?’ So yes. It’s two weeks away and I’m still in the spirit big time (and I got one of his last turkeys!). I’ve tried to spread it out a bit. The last weekend of November we put the outside lights up. The next, the inside decorations and last weekend we did the tree and rode the Santa train!
On Sunday when I got the tree decorations out, I found a nativity set at the bottom of the box. We had one as kids that my sister has now. I think my Mom got this one after Mary and Joseph started to look a little shabby. I know it’s not the old one because Joseph had a staff that he carried that I was forever taking out and playing with. There were sheep and cows, the baby Jesus and the Three Wise Men. I remember playing with them every Christmas and making up stories of a non-religious variety.
When I saw the set on the weekend, I immediately put it back in the box. I wasn’t sure I was ready to get into the whole religious aspect of Christmas yet. He’s a wise little four year old, but I’m not ready to get into the whole ‘you decide what you believe’ yet.
Later in the day, I went and got it out. He hasn’t noticed it yet but when he does, I’ll tell you what will happen. He’ll say – “Who is this baby” and I’ll say ‘there’s a whole other side of Christmas that we’ll talk about.’ He’ll ask to play with the characters and I’ll gladly give them to him.
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Mary and Joseph will get a sweet new ride in his Jeep. The cows will start hanging with Rex and Woody from Toy Story. And slowly, I’ll tell him the other Christmas story. Because religious or not, I’m a fan of that one. And if one of the traditions that I pass on to Will is making up crazy stories with the nativity scene characters, then I think that’s great. Maybe sharing traditions like that is part of my true meaning of Christmas.
Do you celebrate both Christmas stories at your house?
to me, it’s not _the_ story of christmas, it’s _a_ story about christmas so i’ll have my gramma’s nativity characters out for the girls to play with. i mean, it’s not a bad story, is it? kind of nice in a way.
having my family all together is a wonderful sometimes-only-once-a-year story about christmas. that’s what means everything to me and that is _my_ true meaning of christmas. 🙂
Sara, first of all – I remember playing with the figures from the nativity scene too! And then there was the year my sisters and I created our own nativity scene from barbies!
Regarding the religious aspect, I’m with you 100%. My girls are older and can understand more, so we have talked for a number of years now about the different stories behind the holiday. I trust them to make up their own minds – my older daughter has begun to explore Christianity a little bit (attending youth group with fiends, etc.) and I support her doing that – she’ll make a better decision if she has information from many different sources to choose from. And if her decisions turn out to be different than mine, that’s okay too.
Oh, and I also wrote about this my own thoughts on this very same issue back in December 2010: http://www.urbanmoms.ca/losing_it/2010/12/not-too-long-ago-i.html