by Lynn Dancey Rudkin

Created on: September 07, 2010   Last Updated: September 08, 2010

Our thoughts dwell on memories all wrapped up in storybook tales and personal reminiscences  of snowflakes gently falling from a starry sky.  Picking out a tree, dragging ornaments from the attic and lovingly squabbling about who gets to place the angel on top bring on warm fuzzies and giggles. 

 The family bakes cookies, whips up candy, wraps gifts and bustles them to the car before heading down to road to grandmother’s house.  Days are filled with hugs and kisses, greeting even more family and friends coming for the holidays and eating so much it will take the next year to shed weight that are part of the holiday.   Dimly lit church with candles aglow provide a backdrop to beautiful hymns of Christmas hope.

 REALITY

 Then comes a time in most of our lives that we no longer can participate in those identical and well-loved traditions.  By circumstances, we’re pushed to decide which to keep in blended or smaller families, and which to change.  

 Each year, after moving half way across the country, meant scrambling to make air reservations or plans for driving back home to join in those memorable family activities. 

 Year by year, cousins married and obligations to their spouses’ families changed the pattern.  The nuclear family grew smaller.  Grandmother passed on at the age of 94; dad followed a few months later after a courageous battle with lymphoma.  Then mother went to join her loved ones.  There was no immediate family left many miles away. 

 Sometimes people in our transient society who have moved far away from relatives don’t have the time off work or money to travel back home for those precious moments, resorting instead to hearing their loved ones on the phone and sharing pictures and videos.  Often we block out just how hectic all those family gatherings really were.  Still others have no family except their immediate loves ones, all living in the same household.  We have to fall back and evaluate.  How do we change or retain our holidays?

 •  Start by bringing happy Christmas music into your life. Turn off the TV and play CDs, or watch touching Christmas movies while sipping hot chocolate the family has made. 

•  As a family, talk about the happiest Christmas memories each had over the years.  Make a mental list to incorporate those events as best you can. 

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