tradition

I have never kept my love of this time of year secret.
Many people who don’t believe what I believe about it get into it in some way. Either by exchanging gifts or cards, singing some carols somewhere, listening to music inspired by the season..or even going to a church of some kind.

Since the original Christmas was over 2,000 years a go, you can imagine that a lot has changed since then. And with all that time and change there have been a lot of weird and wonderful ideas come up about it.

Here are a few...

In Greek legend, malicious creatures called Kallikantzaroi sometimes play troublesome pranks at Christmas time. In order to get rid of them, salt or an old shoe is burnt. The pungent burning stench drives off, or at least helps discourage, the Kallikantzaroi.
Other techniques include hanging a pig’s jawbone by the door and keeping a large fire so they can’t sneak down the chimney.

In the Ukraine, if you find a spider web in the house on Christmas morning, it is believed to be a harbinger of good luck! There once lived a woman so poor, says a Ukrainian folk tale, that she could not afford Christmas decorations for her family. One Christmas morning, she awoke to find that spiders had trimmed her children’s tree with their webs. When the morning sun shone on them, the webs turned to silver and gold.
An artificial spider and web are now often included in the decorations on Ukrainian Christmas trees.

While that is interesting, I am more interested in now.
What makes Christmas special to you?
Do you have any traditions that have special meaning?
Are they so special as to really influence how you feel about this time?

One of mine is simple but not so cheap.
We love turkey. That is our tradition.
We have it every Christmas and without it I wouldn’t think it really was a normal Christmas.
One year we had Christmas with Suze’s parents and the turkey got overcooked. So to make sure Christmas felt right, we got another one and cooked it a few days later.
Another one we have is to do something different to show people what Christmas really means. Things like making something edible as gift for all our neighbours.

My hope and prayer for you is that this season is great!
If you don’t have a tradition to help add to the special-ness of this time...I hope that you can find one.
Share what you love about this time with someone else.
I think that is in part what Christmas is all about.

Something to think about…