Taking the Celebration of the Holiday Season to a Different Level

Shirley - Appleton, Wisconsin
Entered on November 9, 2009
Themes: family

What I believe is that the holiday season has become too comercialized and too materialistic. I believe that the family doesn’t spend enough time together, doesn’t do enough together as a family, or talk to each other. Families are tending to drift apart.

Taking the celebration of the holiday season to a different level started with the death of my brother. He died from complications of alcoholism, about 5 years ago. I come from a very small family, only me and my sister (and our familes), and we decided to take the holiday season to a different level. Instead of materialistic values in our celebratiions, we wanted to create new memories of the season by planning family time and events as our way of celebrating the holidays.

We start our holiday season with the celebration of Thanksgiving. My daughter and her husband run the Turkey Trot, and then deliver meals to those who can’t get out for the celebration, while the rest of us cook the dinner. When my daughter and her husband and grandson are done delivering the meals, our meal is done and we all sit down, eat and enjoy the rest of the day together.

Our Christmas celebration starts with each family member planning an event or activity to do together as a family during the holiday season. This expands thru to the new year. We plan events and activities that take place the week before and after Christmas. Some of the events that we do are ringing of the bells for Salvation Army, taking baked goods to the nursing homes, planning a game night (which generally starts early afternoon and going all night). This even we usually save for a really cold night. Also we generally have a Christmas movie night, (watching movies at home),Also we go to one concert a year, this year it started early with the Trans Siberian Orchestra Concert this past Sunday. On Christmas Eve we start the afternoon out with going to church, coming back to a non-traditional meal of pizza and then a night of gift opening the the grandson. Even this has been scaled back and the gifts we have picked for them have a purpose. On Christmas night we all go to the movies as a family.