Celebrating your baby’s first Christmas and unwrapping those baby gifts for the first time at home will be a wonderful and rewarding experience, especially if this is your first child. You will be reminded of what it was like for you to be a child again. You will remember that Christmas is about more than giving and receiving gifts, and obligatory gatherings. The true beauty of holidays and Christmas specifically is the marking of time with those you hold dearest in your life. It can be easy to forget with all the commercial hype leading up to the holiday, and the pressure to find the perfect gifts and make the perfect dinner, but Christmas is a holiday made special by the binding of family, food, fun and traditions. Most families have at least a few traditions passed along from generation to generation, practiced year after year. Maybe your family has a special ritual for picking out your Christmas tree, or the way the tree or house gets decorated. Perhaps there is a favorite family recipe for the perfect yam or turkey stuffing that will remain a closely guarded secret for generations to come.
Whatever traditions, rituals and secrets your family engages in, you will find new meaning and new life in them with your baby’s first Christmas. My family started a great tradition of making baby handprint ornaments for each new member of the family and putting them on the tree each year to see how our family has grown. To serve as a reminder that Christmas is a time of growing and rebirth. A baby’s first Christmas ornament can serve as a lifetime keepsake, and be passed from generation to generation along with all of your wonderful traditions.
Another great idea for your Christmas tree decoration is to hang a few favorite pictures from Christmas’s past on the tree this will make the tree an interest object of history and great memories rather than just a place to stick all those presents. See how much else there is to remember at Christmas!
So as this Christmas season approaches, and you feel the many needless pressures of the season, look at your new baby and remember that every holiday is a chance to start over and focus on what is really important, a happy, healthy time of family, food, fun and tradition. Enjoy!