My Holiday Traditions - The Series (Parts 1 and 2)
In this series, I am sharing the traditions and memories I have and observe during the holiday season. As a kid, you grow up with the traditions of your family and those of your local area. As an adult, you practice those same traditions and occasionally create new ones. If for some reason, you move away from your family or hometown you begin to see how your traditions match up or differ with those of your new area.
I grew up in Cincinnati as part of a German catholic family. As a child, I would excitedly wait for the start of the Christmas holiday and eagerly embrace the traditions. It would start with the Advent Calendar (You know, that December 1st count-down mechanism to Christmas. Some were as simple as paper chains, others more elaborate like little houses with 25 opening windows each with a little present inside - Mine was a red and green construction paper chain.). On my paper chain, I would always mark the 6th link, as “St. Nick Day”. This was a big day.
The Feast of St. Nicholas was the way we delivered our Christmas lists to Santa. On St. Nick eve, we would put our final Christmas wish lists in a stocking for St. Nick to collect. (SIDEBAR - Let me elaborate on the “stocking”. It was not the fancy holiday stockings they sell at Target or WalMart. We used to use my fathers knee-length tube socks. We elected to use these because, surprisingly, they held more “stuff”.) We would then go dutifully to sleep and in the morning our lists would be gone and in their place were traditional presents. Traditional presents consisted of; Apples, Oranges, Nuts, Chocolates, and a single small present. To clarify, the nuts were not shelled. We had to use the nutcracker to get to the nut, which was a lot of fun and probably a huge mess for my mother.
As an adult, I’ve brought the traditions of the Advent Calendar and the Feast of St. Nicholas to my son, Caboose. His Advent Calendar is much nicer than mine. He has a wooden Santa that slowly falls down a chimney. He really likes puling the sticks and watching Santa fall. As for St, Nick, we finalized his list on Sunday and now it’s patiently waiting for the December 5th pick-up. Unlike when I was a child, Caboose doesn’t receive the traditional gifts. Instead, he gets a few small toys and non-chocolate candy. But he is as excited about it as I was as a child and I am hopeful that he will carry the tradition along.
Posted by Jennifer Carey on Dec. 04, 2009