December is filled with holiday traditions, family, friends, parties, school functions, the neverending traffic, and sparkly lights. Oh, we can’t forget about the elves for the next few weeks! My sister refuses to jump on the bandwagon of doing Elf on the Shelf. I, on the other hand, decided to embrace it. I embraced it so much that we have three elves. Snowflake, Chippy, and Snowman arrive on the first day of December and leave with Santa on Christmas Eve. We have had our share of fun throughout the years, and I feel that this may be coming to an end after this Christmas. I may just have to keep it going as the kids get older or bring them out for family functions. I’m not sure, but they are a part of our Christmas tradition. We also have matching Christmas pajamas that we open up on Christmas Eve, and my favorite tradition is wrapping the kids’ presents in different wrapping paper. They don’t know who the gifts are for until Christmas morning. 

I love our family traditions around the holidays. While it is an exhausting time of the year, it’s also my favorite time of the year. Looking at the lights, I especially enjoy the houses that put their lights to music. We enjoy driving around and watching the lights. I have no idea how these families have time to make it work. I do know that some of them start in October to be ready to light them up the day after Thanksgiving. Another tradition is the Santa photos and Christmas cards. I’ve never thought about my child being traumatized by sitting on Santa’s lap until my editor brought it up one day. To me, we just put our kids on Santa’s lap and snap away. I noticed this year, my kids just ran up and took the photo; however, my niece and nephew reacted differently. My nephew, who is three, ran up and jumped into his lap and just snuggled, and my niece who is five refused to go see Santa and take a photo. So my daughter, being her protector, picked her up and went and stood behind Santa holding her so we could get our annual photo. To me, it’s just a tradition we do every year, but is it really traumatizing our children? After reading what we found, I am kind of on the fence now. We teach our children they need boundaries, and stranger danger, and it’s their body their choice. So before you run out to see Santa, make sure you read what the experts say, and consider some other routes in order to get that photo with Santa.

Merry Christmas!