Our First Christmas Tradition...

I have felt a lot of pressure about this being Oliver's first Christmas. I have felt like if we are going to have any Christmas traditions, we have to start THIS YEAR. The teeny part of my brain that is more rational assures me that one can start traditions whenever one wants...but I don't listen to that part too often.

While I am sure we will come up with many traditions (or at least one more)---i did come up with one that I am really excited about. It is our Christmas Fire.

Every Christmas Day, we will have a fire. If we do not have a fire place, like we do in our current home, we will go out in nature somewhere to create one. In the fire we will add frankincense and myrrh.

You can see a small peice of charcoal in our fire here with the small pieces of frankincense and myrrh on the charcoal.

The last part of our new tradition is that we will take a scoop of the ashes from this years fire and keep it in this small urn/jar that we found. Next year, we will put those ashes in our Christmas Fire that carry all of our memories from the past year and begin a new fire.

We love the idea of having a traditional fire to sit around and reminisce about the past year. The ashes are a symbolic way to us of carrying our past with us from year to year.

Tradition No. 1----Done.

We did not give any gifts to each other this year. We'll have to figure out the Oliver-gift-giving/receiving thing next year. I'd like to get away with giving him cardboard and/or tupperware for as long as possible.