We love the holiday season, and particularly Christmas. However, Christmas comes only once a year, so you must make the most of it.
Sometimes the excitement gets too much and you just don’t know where to start or what to do. Well, if you’re looking for a few ideas about how to spend your Christmas, read on …
Get up to watch the sunrise
What better way to acknowledge the holiday’s pagan roots, celebrate the returning light, and set a mystical atmosphere over the whole day than to get up for sunrise? (Besides, your kids will get up early for their stockings anyway; might as well make the best of it.)
Go carolling
Before it was tamed into nuclear-family Santa-worship, Christmas was a holiday of heavy partying and class-role reversal. Wassailing, which involved going door-to-door demanding food and drink from the rich folks in exchange for songs and plays (whether welcome or not), would probably not be an advisable family tradition, but if you’re a singer and know a few others nearby, wassailing’s more decorous cousin, carolling can be a delightful way to spread the Christmas spirit after the wrapping paper has come off. In colder climes, take a thermos of hot tea or cocoa along.
Feed the birds
Another common Yule activity among neo-pagans involves decorating outside trees with strings of popcorn and pine cones covered in peanut butter and bird seed. To add an element of impishness and the old wassailing spirit, decorate your whole neighborhood.
Remember the poor
Among those who aren’t headed to church on Christmas Day, volunteering is becoming something of a tradition. There are many options: special dinners, gift programmes for poor kids, soup kitchens, and many more.
Feast
One way to make Christmas feasting special is to pick one or two traditional foods that you wouldn’t have any other time of year – for example, mincemeat pies, chestnuts, plum pudding, roast goose, mulled wine, or from-scratch eggnog (or, apparently, if you’re Finnish, reindeer) – and serve ’em up. Chestnuts roast fine in the oven, by the way, not just on an open fire. For Harry Potter flair, find a British import store selling crackers to place on each plate.
Make gift exchange about means, not just ends
Emphasise that the process of giving and receiving is more important than the quantity of loot by livening up the process with treasure hunts (good for things too big to wrap), deceptive wrapping competitions, guessing games, or other elaborate/ goofy presentations.
Quality time
So here you are on Christmas afternoon, hopefully all together and with some time on your hands. You could all disappear into your new books/ video games, but you could also make it special by picking something to do together that you only do at Christmas. The ritual recitation of How the Grinch Stole Christmas? The whole family watching your favorite Christmas movie together? Time to actually play a complete game of Monopoly? The options are legion.
Call relatives and friends
This is already part of many families’ Christmas Days, and rightly so. Throw in a surprise call to someone who wasn’t expecting it.
Take a look back
Write down memories of the year together in a book and read over last year’s memories, take a yearly picture in a ritual place, or write a New Year’s letter together as a family (because, after all, it’s awfully hard to find time before Christmas to sit down and compose one of those).
Go see the lights
Some people don’t get their lights up until late; others take them down early. So on the day itself you’re likely to get the maximum effect. As the effects of the feasting wear off, head off around the block, to that neighborhood with the crazy utility bills, or to the formal display in the park (but check first – as stupid as it may be, many formal displays are closed on the 25th).
Remember that for kids, the important thing about holidays is often more that there is a ritual than what that ritual is. Pick your poison, but as soon as the kids have come to expect something, you better be prepared to stick to it.
Source: https://www.babble.com
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