December 11 - Family celebration

December 11 – Family Celebrations
Try having the family make a wish list with everything they want on it. The wilder the better, and no lectures about being too greedy. This is just for fun. Sit down together and have fun talking the list over, and “what iffing.” This is very nearly as much fun as receiving the gifts themselves. Think about what you can give to others and how you will share with your community. Then have everyone choose the one (reasonable) thing they would love to have – if you are going to exchange gifts with everyone. And your shopping list is complete and simplified.

Choose one day a week to be a designated special day for one family member. Sunday is a good one. Start with Dad and work right through the family. (Or start with the littlest one and work up.) The person whose “day” it is is responsible for choosing a family activity, and for choosing a story or reading to share with the whole family.

Family parties – Tradition! Choose a family tradition initiate at this party. We spent one day learning to make the traditional fried Italian cookies that, up until now, only my Mom could make. And to tell the truth, ours weren’t as good, but at least we tried. We assigned jobs. Everyone took a turn with the dough, the frying, etc. Then, the finished product was available for eating or admiring.

Someone needs to take the role of narrator, and give blow by blow instructions into a tape cassette or ipod or whatever you have so that everyone has a record of how to accomplish this feat. Be sure to give the little extra tricks and the amusing things that happen.

Have your own family Festival of Trees. Put a small tree in each room and let the

“resident” decorate it to their own taste.

Family Party – Make memory ornaments. Give everyone a large, plain glass ball (plastic for the kids) and paints or permanent markers. They decorate them with some memory of the past year, talk about it before they put it on the tree. Everyone can take their own ornaments to their own tree. (Yes, we used to have a tree for each person to decorate.) That eliminates arguments about ruining color schemes. There just IS no color scheme. The little kids will

enjoy decorating their tree with small toys, trucks or dolls and the like. Cookie cutters are

great to decorate the Christmas tree. Now I can just see you all turning in outraged disbelief to say “With all I have to do, how can you suggest this, but the fact is, If a small tree (real or

artificial) is set in a sturdy base, this is really an unsupervised activity. In fact, make it a

surprise. Everyone decorates their tree and then there is a parade through the house to

view the trees.