Jones Christmas Traditions

Over the years, Stan has insisted on putting up outside lights.  Three or four years ago Stan was seriously injured when he fell out of the tree while putting up lights and I insisted that particular tradition had run its course.  I even had the tree cut down to remove temptation.  However, "Get in Spirit of Christmas Megan" insisted that we owed her outdoor decorations this year since she will be moving on to bigger and better things next year.  She even got Stan to agree.

The two of them spent an evening stringing lights.

Now we can arrive home in the evenings and feel the ungrinchy glow.

Another of our Christmas traditions involves ridiculous amounts of holiday baking.

I remember Oma and Mom baking massive amounts of Christmas cookies.  My favorites of Oma's were a hard anise-flavored cookie which were rolled and cut into stars, and a meringue cookie .

I also remember "helping" Grandma Kenison make pies--I remember she made apple, cherry, and pumpkin or sweet potato pie for the holidays.

It's fun to have a new generation of offspring to help me in the kitchen.

We invited Megan to join us, but she's too worn out from her life skills class.  When she signed up for life skills, I thought she'd be learning to balance a check book, cook a quick and cheap supper, and sew on buttons.  Silly me.  Life skills explores every legal recreational activity know to man. Megan has been rock climbing, learning to play ping pong, hiking, playing basketball, volleyball, raquet ball, and a zillion other activities. Today Megan had to get on a bus at 6:30 am and go to Red Lodge to snowboard all day.  Poor thing.  She even had to miss a whole day at school. You can tell by her face what a hard day she's had.  I understand she has to go a second time, too.

An important part of our traditions involves Christmas Eve and Christmas stockings. 

But not these stockings hang by our chimney with care. 

These are the totally impractical stockings made of felt and sequins I made after the birth of each child.  They are so old, Shelly's stocking says "Michelle".  I think we called her that for the first 37 1/2 days after she was born.

These stockings aren't good for holding anything but air.  I made different stockings for the good stuff. 
I'll write that post later.

Mom gave me this magnetic Santa years and years ago. It's been one of my little children's favorite Christmas things over the years. 

This year it's holding Megan's temple recommend to the fridge.

We've been using an artificial tree for years.  Seven or eight years ago, these skinny trees were really popular.  I was the first person in line at the after Christmas sales to buy one.  Unlike our old tree, it fits into a corner of our living room without having to move furniture out.  I love that.


When Stan and I were first married, we started a tradition of buying an ornament each year to symbolize the past year.  This house is from our first Christmas in 1977 to represent our establishing a household together.

This Santa is this year's ornament, purchased in Nassau, Bahamas.

In between we've had ornaments like this mouse holding a thermometer from 1985 which was the year we had flu, strep, croup, flu, pneumonia, numerous ear infections, flu, pink eye, and Scott had chicken pox, followed 2 weeks later by Shelly, and two weeks after that by baby Amy. 
Then we all got the flu.

We've collected ornaments from our various vacations like this slightly tacky-looking 1995 Mount Rushmore creation.

Lately we've been forced to buy two or more to mark major events like Jessica and Jorden's 2006 wedding and Caden's birth.

When Scott and Shelly were little, I bought this nativity set because it was cheap inexpensive and unbreakable, and I wanted one my children could handle.  Now it's thirty years later and this set has been handled by many children and still survives.

The Baby Jesus for this set is tiny--about 1 inch long, 3/8 inch around-just right to fit into Mary's arms.  We've managed to keep him safe for all these years.  I decided to put him away one night when a certain someone kept carrying him off.

Guess who forgot where she put Baby Jesus? 

Old, forgetful people shouldn't be allowed to touch the family heirlooms.

One of the traditions I personally had growing up was to carefully unwrap presents before Christmas to see what I got, then carefully re-wrap them.  Sometimes it was a real strain to pretend surprised delight on Christmas morning over a present I'd opened three times weeks before.

photo by Hailey

In an effort to spare my own children this hardship, over the years I never put Christmas presents under the tree pre-Christmas.  Besides that, presents for a family of eight pretty much filled the living room, even during our lean years when everyone just got socks and underwear.  These days I just wrap things as I buy them and put them under the tree.  Even with Makayla and Hailey's gifts, it's pretty sparse compared to bygone years.

Now I'm having to keep a close eye on a certain sneak.

Don't you hate it when your bad habits appear in younger generations?