Are you ready for the best, sure to become your most favorite Christmas Eve dinner tradition?  A warning from my mom: once you start this tradition, nobody will let you stop.  But I say, why would you want to?

Step 1: Get a small present for each person in your family.  In our little family, the present is an ornament.

Step 2: Wrap the presents — don’t attach any visible identifying name tags, but you’ll probably want to mark the bottom of each present so you know who they all belong to as you set things up — and place them in the middle of the dinner table.  Don’t let the kiddos see you doing any of this.

Step 3: Attach a ribbon to the bottom of each present, and lead it back to the plate of the person who the present belongs to.

But this is the tricky part: you have to wind the ribbon around the presents and the centerpieces, so that when people sit down to eat, they can’t tell which present the ribbon under their plate leads to.

I’m a horrible decorator, and awful at taking pictures of tabley things, but this gives a decent idea.  See how the ribbon all wraps around, and you can’t tell where it is or isn’t attached to the presents?

After dinner is over, clear the plates while everyone holds on to the ribbon that was under their plate.  On the count of three, have everyone gently pull their ribbon towards them until their present is in their spot!

My mom did this for our family for as long as I can remember, and even when I was home from college, I still requested (or demanded) she continue the tradition.  When I was little, I loved sitting through the meal, staring at the presents and trying to guess which was mine.  It’s the best tradition ever.

Because of messy schedules, we already had our Christmas Eve dinner this year.  This was the first year Lydia cared about this tradition, and she loved it.

Her ornament:

When I saw the ornament, I thought the little girl was singing, although I suppose she could just as easily be reading.  At any rate, Lydia loves to do both things — sing and read.  She’s a darn good singer, and sings all the time, so I told Lydia this ornament reminded me of her beautiful voice.

She said, “Oh,” and then eyed Daddy’s ornament that was a guitar-like instrument you can really play.

“Hey Dad, we can share your ornament,” she ever-so-kindly offered while her own adorable, chosen-with-love-and-care ornament lay discarded in a pile of wrapping paper.  Oh well.  One day, when she’s a famous singer, she’ll look at this ornament and actually like it.

I just finished a very satisfying piano practice session while my husband gave our daughter a bath and got her ready for bed.  This is a routine we try to stick to and we are successful 20% of the time.  We’re busy, ya know?

I love him for it.  He gives me no guilt for pursuing a completely solo activity while he does the dirty work.  In fact, he INSISTS I go sit at the piano.  (It may be because I tend to get a bit cranky without my musical unwinding.  Or maybe he really is just as charming as I make him sound.  Either way, he’s a gem.)

And while I play, either frustratingly (some nights, my fingers just don’t obey) or tranquilly, I always always feel a surge of gratitude in my heart for that man.

Do you want to know how I got the piano?  I’ll tell you.  Ryan and I used to both work at the same place which gave out AMAZING Christmas bonuses.  The year we bought our house, we both got fabulous Christmas checks.  Since we now had a house, it made perfect sense to me that we would furnish it with a piano.  And those fabulous checks would be the means of purchasing the piano.

I didn’t realize how selfish my assumption was until later.  And I didn’t realize how utterly selfless it was of my husband to agree and willingly give up his large check to pay for a piano he will rarely touch, except to dust (cuz he’s great at doing chores).

Now I realize it.  And on those successful 20% nights when I get to actually practice the piano, I fall in love all over again with my sweet husband for giving me a gift that truly keeps on giving.  20% of the time.

He did good this year.

Our Christmas tradition of giving each other a new ornament each year has not always come to pass.  I’m not even sure you could call it a tradition if ornaments have not always been exchanged.  Nevertheless, giving each other ornaments has been a tradition in my mind since we got married.

And he did a good job this year. 

I wish I could have recorded his face as he watched me open my ornament.  He was truly giddy.  When I saw the ornament, I barely had time to register what it was before he snatched it out of my hands and explained it’s meaning.

“I just love watching you as a mom.  I think you’re so good with Lydia and I love to see you two together.  I thought this ornament represented that.”

He handed it back and I fell in love.  Again.

Is it bad parenting to force your child to talk to Santa?

If she clings to me and doesn’t want to tell him her greatest wish of chapstick and headbands arriving on Christmas morning, why should she have to?  Isn’t it better to keep her innocent and demand-free for at least one more Christmas?

Too late.  She’s been forced.  She has uttered her greatest desire to the bearded man.  I may have pushed her into materialism for the sake of cuteness and tradition.  What was I thinking?

I know Christmas is O V E R, but taking down the decorations reminded me of one more Christmas tradition I enjoy.  I give my husband an ornament every year that is supposed to represent something significant that happened that year.

I began during our first year of marriage, 2005, with this blurry little wakeboarder.  We fell in love on a wakeboarding trip during 2004 and were married in 2005.  So I thought this was a good representation of the start of our lives together.

In 2006, I graduated from college, and my wonderful parents sent us on a trip to London and Paris.

In 2007, we had a baby girl.

And in 2008, we worked together through some tough times, that led us to rely much more heavily on faith.

We started the tradition with our daughter with two nativity ornaments her first year, since she was born close to Christmas.  This year, she got a black cat wearing a Santa hat because she adores (attacks) our black cat with fervor.

It’s kind of fun to summarize an entire year with one store bought representation.  Do you do anything similar?  What object would best represent YOUR 2008?

Gasp!  Can you believe Christmas is THIS WEEK??!?!?!  I’m so excited.  I want to share some of my favorite nativity paintings this week.  This one is by Utah artist, Brian Kershisnik.  (Say that 10 times fast).

You can’t see all the wonderful detail in this tiny image, but oh, it is stunning.  The painting is 17′ by 7′.  Enormous!  It definitely makes an impact.  What I absolutely love about this painting is the time it depicts.  It is just moments after the birth of Christ, as evidenced by the blood still on the midwives’ hands.  I love the serene but tired face of Mary, the thankful and incredibly relieved face of Joseph, and the anticipatory looks of the beautiful midwives.  I love the influx of angels, swooping in, but only able to stay a moment before they are swept away in the incredible rush of many more angels eager to see the newborn Christ.  Look how the angels point out the baby to each other.  They are so thrilled to be present at this most precious moment.

This painting is currently on display at the Museum of Fine Arts in Salt Lake City.  Go here to read a little more about Brian Kershisnik and see a bigger picture of his Nativity.

What do you think of this painting?

Have you heard of Kurt Bestor? One of my piano students gave me one of his Christmas CDs. He plays beautiful piano arrangements of Christmas songs. His arrangements have a lovely, soothing feel to them. We’re loving listening to him around our house this week!

We’ve been listening to this CD all week. I don’t speak French, although I must look like I do because a common question I am frequently asked is, “Do you speak French?” I haven’t yet figured out why that question is posed to me so often. I am never even in the company of French speakers. I went to Paris a few years ago, and my greatest French speaking achievement was understanding the hotel worker when she asked me if I wanted coffee or hot chocolate. I’m assuming I answered correctly, because I was given a steaming cup of bitter hot chocolate.

Anyway, despite my inability to speak or understand French beyond simple questions of my preference of hot beverages, I have enjoyed this CD my sister-in-law sent to me. I recognize all the songs because of their melodies and it’s fun to hear them in such a beautiful language!

What Christmas decorations do you look forward to pulling out of your storage each year?

My favorite thing to pull out of our Harry Potter storage closet under the stairs is my miniature Christmas village.

When I was 11 or 12, my grandparents gave each grandchild a crisp new one hundred dollar bill for Christmas.  You can imagine how excited we all were.  At that age, I don’t even know if I had ever seen a one hundred dollar bill, much less had one in my posession!

My friends romanced me with stories of all the new clothes I could buy at the after-Christmas sales, and believe me, it was tempting!  But, I can’t change who I am: I’m a very sentimental gal, so I knew I wanted to use the money to purchase something that would always help me to remember my grandparents. 

So I headed down to our mall’s Christmas store and studied all the little villages they had on display.  They had the colorful, candy decorated ones, the Charles Dickens Village, the Disney villages.  But I love the city, so the “Christmas in the City” series caught my eye immediately.

These villages aren’t cheap.  I was only able to purchase a post office and a figurine, but I loved it, and proudly displayed it on my dresser, right next to my gigantic boom box.  You can see it on the far right in the picture below.

My village is still rather small (see above note about that pesky price issue), but it has grown to include a  school, apartment building, theater, and toy shop, as well as lots of little people wandering the streets.

Every year now, as I pull each piece out and admire it, I think of my grandparents 800 miles away in California.  And I can’t wait to share this tradition with my children, all the while telling them stories about their Great Grandpa who has a huge heart and loves to tease and Great Grandma who makes you feel so loved with her kind words and her pride in her posterity’s accomplishments.