Your Family's Holiday Traditions Are Worth Sharing
J Gardener
This is the time of year when families begin making serious holiday plans. Thanksgiving and Christmas are celebrations which center around family gatherings, and each year, every family wants to make the season perfect.
Your family's plans are probably full of tradition, developed and passed down through the years. Most families develop comfortable holiday habits, and follow them year after year. Rarely is anyone surprised, not even Santa Claus, as he makes his way down your chimney and to your tree, planting toys and goodies in exactly the same manner, each Christmas Eve.
If there's a drawback to the way each family chooses to celebrate the holidays, it's probably in the sameness of each year's habits. The repetition, each season, of observances and traditions, can mean a sameness in the memories created, each Christmas. It can be hard, as a family grows, to distinguish the memory of one holiday from the one that came the year before. Unless you choose to alter your tradition, just enough, to make each Christmas its own unique day.
Here's something you might try. Your family and its traditions are special and meaningful to you, so why not invite someone into your circle, this year, who may not be able to spend the holidays with family and loved ones? Your family's holiday could be the perfect cure for someone else's loneliness.
There are many folks, these days, who find themselves away from home during the holidays, for reasons of business or education. Universities have many academic courses that require students or faculty to stay close to campus, even over the Christmas break, preventing them from getting home, out of state.
Many who serve in the military can be at home on leave during the holidays, but all military bases must retain the presence of at least minimal numbers of personnel. If there is a base near you, there are probably soldiers who would relish the chance to share Christmas with a loving family.
Everyone wants to be home for the holidays, celebrating with loved ones. But for many people each year, it's just not possible. And these lonely hearts are not likely to seek out families they don't know well, and ask to be a part of their Christmas. So, if you'd like to share your home and fellowship with someone who has nowhere else to go, this year, you'll have to take the initiative and invite them.
If you do manage to find someone who needs a surrogate family, over the holidays, you need not change your family's traditions to accommodate the new party. Part of what you've chosen to share with them is the comfort your family finds in its own habits. Sharing your holidays can be enriching for all concerned, and can help to keep each year's celebration completely unique.
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