12 Days of Christmas: 12
I can’t believe I’m typing this right now but ladies we are twelve days from Christmas. Twelve! Anybody else feeling a little overwhelmed by that? If you’re anything like me the stress of the final days leading up to the holidays can start to overshadow the joy, and joy is what Christmas is all about! So, to help keep us all focused on the real MVP of Christmas, Jesus, and the joy He came to bring we have compiled our own 12 Days of Christmas, TSG style!
12 Drummers Drumming
On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me…tradition! (Please tell me I’m not the only one singing Fiddler on the Roof in my head right now.) Do you come a family rife with Christmas traditions? Maybe you grew up going to get your Christmas tree with from the same farm the day after Thanksgiving every year or maybe you always go get your tree from a local nursery and decorate it as a family on Christmas Eve? No matter how you celebrate, part of what makes the Christmas season so magical are the traditions that we build with our family and friends. So, what happens when you no longer live with your parents and siblings, but you also aren’t married with a family of your own? Sometimes I get the holiday blues when I scroll through my feed and see (what feels like) all of my friends from college starting and continuing new traditions with their spouses and children. The photos of tiny tots pretending to chop down evergreen trees and red shopping carts full of secret stocking stuffers start to seem less like magical family memories and more like a judgement on my artificial tree and the fact that my stocking isn’t even hanging up this year.
So how do we combat this trend towards negativity and comparison and keep ourselves open to the magic and the joy? By marching to the beat of our own drum. Christmas isn’t about how we celebrate- it’s about who we celebrate! There is nothing wrong with holiday traditions, like I said before they are one of the best parts of Christmas! But if your tradition is to turn on White Christmas and to assemble your artificial tree limb by painstaking limb then more power to you! If your tradition is to invite all your girlfriends over for a night of wine and cookie decorating, then that sounds just perfect to me (also invite me because I LOVE decorating cookies!) By accepting that traditions are personal to each of us and something meant to create community and fellowship, not comparison and frustration, we can celebrate each other’s traditions while feeling free to start new traditions of our own. How are you marching to the beat of your own drum this Christmas? Check back in tomorrow for the eleventh day of Christmas!
-Abby
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[…] Abby said yesterday, this can be a season that ends up being a lot more about comparisons than celebrations. […]
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