Celebrating the Winter Season: 25 Days of Christmas

Every year we have the tradition of celebrating Hanukkah with our good  friends, Barbara & Bernie.  This year I hosted a fun Hanukkah dinner at our house. I made Potato Latkes and Matzo Ball Soup. Months before the month of December I had an idea of celebrating the entire month, just not Christmas but other winter holidays and the origins of the the modern day Christmas. This is our first official Christmas without Santa Claus.

Here is Barbara's beautiful menorah. She gave us a smaller menorah that we will forever treasure. Hanukkah fell early in December so we started our 25 day winter celebration with a fun evening with Barbara and Bernie celebrating Hanukkah together.

Later in the month on December 21st, the girls and I celebrated the Winter Solstice with a pizza dinner by candle light and wearing glow sticks.

Now that the girls no longer believe in Santa I wanted to take the focus off the materialistic nature of Christmas. As I grow older I have a fascination of the origins of modern day holidays and how other cultures celebrate the season. My plan was to celebrate the 25 days of December leading up to Christmas with different activities that celebrate the Winter Season, just not Christmas. I wanted to weave in Advent and St. Nicholas, traditions that I grew up with as my family is Catholic. I also wanted more of celebrating Christmas than the cheap advent chocolates from Walgreens and opening up gifts on Christmas Day. I want to expose the girls to different cultures, religions as well as incorporate fun things like watching family favorite movies, baking Christmas cookies and gathering with family and friends. I really want to get away from the "stuff" of Christmas.

I took the calendar and mapped out our December. First looking to see when Christmas was and when Hanukkah fell. Each day I planned an activity. We enjoyed a special poetry tea time where we read poems that we themed in winter and Christmas. I found a bunch of great poetry books at the library. We watched the movie White Christmas, Elf and Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer.  My girls had never seen White Christmas before. They loved it! I grew up celebrating St. Nicholas which falls on December 6th of each year. I never celebrated with the girls before this year. This year I incorporated the tradition in our 25 days of Christmas. A knock at the door and there was a bag of peanuts, candy and oranges.  I did a little research of St. Nicholas and shared that with the girls.  We made gingerbread houses together, visited the aquarium in Newport to see the light display. This was the first year. Next year I want to expand it more and do more community service. I have a file that put in ideas. Olivia suggested that we make a yule log. I love that idea. Shortly after the holidays I came across a magazine that had a recipe for a yule log. It has been added to the file. We took most of December off from our daily "school." I am already looking forward to next year.