New Traditions, Old Magic?

This will be the first year since Mike and I met that we won't be traveling to Idaho for Christmas, and I've been thinking a lot about what makes Christmas at home magical for me. My family has always had a lot of traditions and I want the same thing for my kids. We trimmed the tree tonight and I had to laugh at what will eventually become the new Christmas traditions for our children.

First, instead of going to the woods, or even to a Christmas tree lot to pick out a tree (this included stopping at McDonalds for burgers and looking at Christmas lights and singing carols in the car for us), Mike made the trek into the storage room in our basement and hauled up the giant box that holds our fake Christmas tree. It comes out of the box looking more like a green rectangle than a tree, so we spent a good half hour pulling the branches apart and trying to make it look "real." This is a painful process because those wires are really jabby!

While we trimmed the tree I wanted Christmas music, but we don't have a stereo, nor do we have any Christmas albums. So I set up my laptop and played youtube Christmas slide shows set to Nat King Cole, Andy Williams and Karen Carpenter songs. My daughter decorated the bottom half of the tree with kid ornaments and I did the top with nice ones, and maybe I will re-do it while she's sleeping tonight. My mom always did, and Mike says his mom did too. ;)

After we finished the tree we washed our hands. Not because of sticky pine sap. Mainly because of the lead warnings on the tree and on the lights. Seriously, can't we make anything without lead in it?

Finally, I plugged in a pine scented air freshener to get that Christmas tree smell in the air. It is good and actually does smell like a tree! After decorating the Christmas tree a family should sit down to a nice dinner of comfort food, so Mike warmed up a can of soup for him and DD to share.

What wonderful traditions our children will have to look back on and try to recreate with their own kids, haha. The best part is that DD really DID have a great time. I think maybe Christmas can be magic regardless of whether the soup's from a can and the tree smell is an air freshener. Maybe the magic is about family doing Christmas things together. My next project is to buy Christmas cookie dough and bake it with DD. I'll let you know if that rates on the Christmas magic scale too. ;)