For the last several years, maybe since we’ve had kids, maybe since El Salvador, maybe since we are living on one income, Christmas has taken a different face for our family. It’s not that Christmas has changed, though, you know. It’s us. This year I actually made our Christmas gifts (but more on that later). For the last few years, instead of the crazy race that begins on black Friday and lasts until Christmas day, we’ve been intentional about creating traditions that help us focus on what Christmas means.
Usually sometime the week or so after Thanksgiving we sit around and add rings to our Thanksgiving chain. We each get 1 or 2 strips of paper and write a few things we’re thankful for on them. We’ve had our chain since 2004 – our first Christmas after Joaquin was born. Early on we hung it over windows or dangled it from doors, but now it’s long enough to circle our tree beautifully. I love that this centers us at the beginning of advent – allowing us to focus on how much we have to be thankful for and teaching us to practice the attitude of thankfulness.
The last three years we’ve marked advent with our kids by numbering and wrapping our collection of advent books. These are basically books we’ve chosen that communicate our values about the season. They open one each night and we sit together and read it, and reflect together on our expectations of Christmas. We started out with this list three years ago. It has changed a bit as we’ve found other books that are more in line with the messages we want to send our kids about Christmas. A few we’ve added in the last couple years are: The Christmas Gift by Francisco Jimenez and Charro Claus and the Tejas Kid by Xavier Garza. It is rare that I walk away from our advent reading with dry eyes as I read stories about God’s love for people, or people caring for one another, or visions of a more just world. And I love that the kids are beginning to remember the books from years past, and as they open them they often shout, “oh, my favorite!” Boo does this too, imitating her siblings, but excited nonetheless about the story we read each night.
It’s been several years since Jake and I exchanged gifts at Christmas. Ya, I suppose that’s mostly a financial issue - why spend the money when it’s so tight? Right? But as I made gifts this year, I started thinking – shoot, if I can be this creative for my extended family, I certainly aught to be a little more creative in thinking about something for my husband. I’ll let you know how that goes next year. 
And for our extended family, for the first time we made our Christmas gifts. It was difficult, certainly challenging my creative ability, but overall things turned out really cool. I made sock monkeys for my nieces and nephews. And they didn’t turn out half bad. If I were to do it again, I’d have made them of colorful socks, and not black ones. At the same time, the black disguised much of my sloppy stitching.
And for my mom and sister, I made purses / bags. It was fun picking fabric that I imagine they’d like and envisioning how’d they could use them. I decided the black and grey one would have looked better had I sewed on a black pocket on the front. But by the time I finished both bags I was just so exhausted and it was the day before Christmas eve. I told myself this has to be good enough.
Finally, the kids and I made key chains, necklaces and bracelets for grandparents, aunts, and uncles. We made the beads out of clay, baked them and strung them. I was really excited about how they turned out.
So it’s crazy how when you make gifts for people they seem so much more valuable to give. I watched eagerly as our family opened their gifts, excited to see their reaction the what we’d given them. And I loved the way my kids hung around while I made the sock monkeys or the bags – they knew how much they meant because they knew the time they took to make. And they actually asked if they could have sock monkeys too. Sadly, I did not plan on making my kids’ gifts. We bought them. But I think I’ve caught the bug – I’ve been inspired. If I start early enough I might be able to do it next year. I should probably start planning now. 
And now we are awaiting Epiphany. The day we celebrate the arrival of the three kings in the Christmas story. It has been a really fun tradition we’ve added the last couple of years. We make Rosca de Reyes and hide the little plastic baby Jesus inside the bread. Whoever gets the piece with Jesus in it gets to choose a place for our family to go out and eat. We save one book Federico and the Magi’s Gift for the night before Epiphany. And we have the kids leave their shoes outside so as the kings pass buy, they leave a little gift – a book, or a toothbrush – something small. They know that Jake and I leave the gift, but we explain that we give gifts to them out of love just as the kings gave gifts to Jesus. We’re actually considering changing our family’s gift giving day to Epiphany next year.
This year this season has been beautiful and meaningful as we’ve watched our kids learn and grow. And I love the way these traditions make our family more us, more together, and more centered.
