Heartfelt and Handmade Holidays Christmas Day

Today I am continuing our videos for our Heartfelt and Handmade Holidays. Anjeanette has been the one posting the videos for us up until now. So this is my first try posting one on my own. Pretend that my mouth is moving at the same time as the video...k? My family always calls me motor mouth. Watching this video with the audio out of sync to the video, I can see why they may call me that! ;) And, apparently when I make a video by myself...I also over accentuate facial gestures. Let's just pretend I'm keeping my kiddos occupied while trying to film the video. So the exaggerated gestures are for them! Or if it keeps you amused, that works as well! It's a short video with a few ideas for keeping Christmas Day heartfelt.

For those of you who made it through that video without laughing, thank you. For those who laughed...so did I!

I will be assessing my Christmas Day, as I do each of the holidays. I will think about what parts of it are important to me or for my children. The rest I will leave out. I will also notice in what ways I can complete the mood for the day. I will make sure to have all the senses accounted for when I can.

I'd love to hear some of your Christmas Day traditions or what you feel your priorities are, on Christmas Day. How do you handle wrapping and unwrapping of the presents? Can't wait to hear from you.

Rebecca

~~Oh Rebecca! I'm thrilled your video doesn't sync either! It is much harder than I imagined too. Apparently, you and I are very expressive with our faces. I think it is fun to let our readers see us.

I love Christmas morning!! I am usually the one rounding up everyone in the morning. Even when I first got married, I would be up early and just dying to wake my husband up. I remember trying really hard to wake him up sometime around 5:00 am, saying "Let's see what Santa brought us..." I'm sure he thought I was nuts. Hopefully, this year, my kids will wake up earlier than I will.

I always start my morning with cinnamon rolls in the oven while we open gifts. I need to find a good wheat and dairy free recipe this year;) I bet that doesn't really exist. (Let me know if you have one to share.) And I need to figure how to make something for my 3 year old out of rice, rice milk and sugar;) I guess he will get my rice only rice krispy treats for Christmas breakfast.

My oldest son loves to hand out the presents. He reads the names from the gifts and sets up piles next to each of us. Then we take turns opening gifts. One person opens a gift while the others watch. I hate for the gifts to get rushed through and not getting to see their faces as they open their new thing.

This is the first year that I won't be doing Christmas Eve dinner. We usually spend Christmas day eating leftovers. I'll have to come up with something fun for food on Christmas Day.

The best part of our celebration is that our 92 year old Maternal Grandmother is staying with us. We grew up with our grandparents sleeping over on Christmas Eve. They have always been there on Christmas morning to watch the kids open their gifts. Last year, Grandma didn't come to stay with us. This year she is with us again! My kids adore her and she is looking forward to watching my children open their gifts on Christmas morning! She said she was glad to be "home" for Christmas this year.

I too would love to know what you do.

Anjeanette
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Katrina Here:

One thing I like to do is have all the gifts from "Santa" be wrapped in special paper. I am VERY CAREFUL not to ever wrap something from Santa in paper we have used for other gifts. I even hide it at the bottom of a drawer where the boys will never see it. It always has Santa on it. Even the ribbon I use has something to do with Santa on it.

In my family, when I was growing up, we always opened gifts from each other on Christmas Eve after dinner. All of the dinner dishes and leftovers had to be cleaned up. It was the one time that more than one of us were washing dishes so that we could get to opening presents faster. Thinking back to my childhood the opening of gifts felt a little frenzied but I know that we each took turns opening a gift. I remember watching to see what everyone got. This is definitely something I want to emphasize for my own children. The gifts that we opened on Christmas day were just the presents from Santa.

Another thing that I remember from my childhood is the tradition of adding and orange to the items in the stocking. I have read about similar traditions where an apple was placed in the toe of the stocking for good luck,an orange in the heal if you were good, a nut for fun, salt for good luck and a piece of coal to keep you warm in the new year. I could easily see adding a candle or a flashlight instead of the coal and the meaning would be to guide your way. Another thing that my mother always did for our stocking was to go to a world market that had specialty candies from all over. We would always get little tins of hard candies and a chocolate orange. They were items we didn't get any other time of year. They were not the standard candies that you can buy and any store (though they are in more store now than they use to be). It was fun to get some candies that are sold in other parts of the world. Oh how I wish that they made those chocolate oranges gluten and dairy free. That way I could pass on that tradition to my boys. To this day I look forward to my chocolate orange on Christmas.

Katrina