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"Wait on the Lord, be strong and of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart...wait on the Lord. Psalms 27:14

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Wednesday, December 06, 2006

A Christmas HDQ and AskNic

Christmas Traditions. There are a lot of Christmas Traditions out there that we celebrate, but did you ever wonder where we get a lot of them from? Why we do or say or have certain things at Christmas time? Well, there is a station here in Austin that has collected a whole bunch of traditions and placed them on one page. You can find them HERE. There are some very interesting ones that I have enjoyed reading.

This brings me to the HDQ (Humpy Day Question being that Wednesday is the hump day of the week).

What is your favorite Christmas tradition that you celebrate every year or have participated in in the past?

I answered this in a recent Friday's Feast but I'll post it again. My favorite Christmas tradition is at my mom's house. She has her tree decorated with lots of white lights – my favorite kind. Not the blinking ones, but the steady, small, clear white lights. LOTS of them. On Christmas Eve, after the Christmas Eve candlelight service at church, after the presents have been opened and the food has been eaten (in our Dutch family we open gifts Christmas Eve), we get blankets and pillows and lay on the living room floor to fall asleep under the soft glow of the Christmas tree lights and listening to the quiet hush of Christmas music playing in the CD player. It's quiet and still and peaceful and it's just lovely!

This is also the return of the Ask Nic: today as well.

This is the place where you can ask me anything that is on your mind about me, something you have wanted to know or were just curious about in general. You can ask about my experiences in life and love and parenting, my beliefs, etc... Be creative, be fun, be introspective, but please be clean! You can post the questions in the comments section or email me your question directly to asknic@gmail.com.

I will be posting the questions and their responses soon so check back within the next week for them.

4 comments:

Jean-Luc Picard said...

Getting up Christmas morn is a fine tradition; nowadays, it is mixed with taking flowers to where my mother is in the crematorium.

What do you look forward to most at Christmas?

Anonymous said...

When I was a child, it was going to midnight mass and having 12 traditional ukranian dishes and opening presents one at a time after supper...

now... married and with my own kids; we separate Christmas and presents. We do Sinterklaas day on Dec. 6th with the kids. They each get a small gift and we tell the story of St. Nickolaus. Than for christmas we have a birthday party for Jesus!
Not what I'm used to, but it's growing on us!

Anonymous said...

If you ask my kids (now 9 and 18) what their favorite tradition is (and me too!)- they will undoubtedly say making gingerbread cookies. Now, in our house, this is not what you might envision!
First, I make a huge batch of gingerbread dough. We get out lots of cookie cutters, small knives and shaping tools and my husband and the kids get to work. My husband, a very good artist, turns the dough into lots of familiar shapes and people and I keep things going in and out of the oven. He has made all of our faces, out cats, our rabbits, his canoe, band logos and so much more. Some of these have been dried and placed on the tree as an ornament - some have been wrapped and given as gifts. The kids generally use cookie cutters, but do some free hand work as well.
We take an entire afternoon close to Christmas and then enjoy eating the more ’standard’ cookies - some iced and some plain - until New Years!

Anonymous said...

I love this traditions page...mind if I link it on my blog tomorrow??? Glad I stopped by other than on a Tuesday...can't wait to read what some of your readers question you about ;)