Share Your Holiday Rituals

Each week the Moms Council discusses a parenting topic. This week Mary Hannon gets us started talking about our families' holiday rituals.

: I didn't expect to have rituals, but if the kids wanted it to be the same as the previous year, things started becoming rituals.

We celebrate Christmas and for our family music and food are a big part of the holiday. We began collecting unusual Christmas albums that we play in the morning as we stumble in the pre-dawn dark. We have album covers staged above the doorway and windows in the living room where the tree is and we keep the music flowing.

I always made an effort to add something new to the breakfast table and made sure to decorate the night before so that we woke up to a festive house. The exciting menu of homemade waffles, strawberries, maple syrup and whip cream are part of the festivities.

The children are much older now but they anticipate with excitement some of the rituals we created together as a family. I didn't expect to have rituals, but what happened was we did something and then the kids asked if we were going to do it again. They decided when something was going to continue, it was through their desire to have the same as last year,  that we created the ritual.