Celebrate Today- ceremonies and celebrations to make your days count

In my family growing up, my grandmother had a gumdrop tree.  My mother had a gumdrop tree.  And when I got married, I was given a gumdrop tree at a Christmas wedding shower.  The first one I had was a chintzy see-through plastic tree that was in a box that said "money tree".  I guess some people tied money to the branches as a way to give cash as a gift.  But in our family, this small plastic object was pulled out each year and gumdrops were stuck to the ends of the branches.  The bottom tray held a bunch of gumdrops under the tree for the extras that would not fit on the branches. I loved my daily ritual in December of passing by the gumdrop tree that was placed in the hallway outside the kitchen and of snatching a few gumdrops.  (Note to anyone who tries this: You can always conceal your snacking by restocking the empty branches with gumdrops from the tray. Your real challenge comes when the tray is empty. Good luck on that one.)  ...

Since Anna and Taylor were little, we have individually wrapped our Christmas books as an Advent book countdown.  (We used to wrap them in wrapping paper when Taylor was about 2-3 and when he loved playing with scotch tape, but wrapping this many gifts was pretty time intensive so I bought gift bags at the dollar store that we now use each year.) It is now a quick process to get our box of Christmas books out, drop them into the bags that are numbered for each day, and place some tissue paper on top.  Then we line the stairs with the bags for a festive Christmas display.  Beginning on December 1, the children pick a “present” for the day, unwrap it and then we read it together for our bedtime story.   I made sure to have the  Saint Nicholas: The Real Story of The Christmas Legend   book on December 6 th  for St. Nicolas Day and used the pop-up book of  The Night Before Christmas   on December 24 th .   This is on...

On Friday night, I had just returned from taking my brother to the airport. My parents were still here for one more night of our Thanksgiving holiday together, and we decided to pull out some of our Christmas decorations.  As everyone was sitting by the fire enjoying time together, I went down to the basement to find some of our Christmas boxes.  We are in the process of remodeling our basement so some of the boxes were difficult to reach as they have been moved around quite a bit over the last few months in order to get work done, but I was on a mission and was determined to track them down. I muscled my way to lift the heavy boxes and began to haul them upstairs.  At one point, I was flying up the stairs with a box in tow. As I turned around to head back down to get another box, I bumped hard into Jason who was also walking in the hallway.  I apologized to him, but then had to laugh at myself at the irony of the whole thing.  I had gotten so focused on getti...

For as long as I can remember, I have relished creating and taking opportunities to celebrate the people in my life (family, friends, sometimes unsuspecting strangers) through events both regular (birthdays, anniversaries, holidays) and less predictable (sidewalk chalk congratulations, hanging stockings in the woods for Christmas in July).  A few years ago, after we had sung some goofy song around the table for our blessing before the meal with another family who had joined us for dinner, my friend asked me if I had any of these blessings and or other celebrations and family traditions written down. I told her that I did not, but that I would see what I could put together for her.  That was 3 1/2 years ago, and I've been working on a draft ever since.   One author David B. Batchelder encourages family traditions as ways to “weave faith into the structures of daily life."   He notes that “as we pay attention to special times ...