Holidays: Making Christmas Your Own

People who have only just started celebrating Christmas — either because they have married someone who grew up celebrating Christmas, because they have chosen to celebrate Christmas “suddenly” of their own accord, or because they’ve chosen the path of least resistance in school, offices and communities, don’t have the family history of Christmas with the family decorations wrapped in the attic and taken out once a year. They are making this holiday their own, and are doing so in their own way.

Non-Traditional Trees

1. Bouganvilla makes a wonderful indoor Christmas tree substitute. Because it’s not towering like a tree, it is great for apartments or small rooms.

2. A rose bush doesn’t normally do too well indoors, but if only for a week or a night, it might make a lovely, fragrant apartment or small room alternative to a pine tree.

3. Make a tree out of tin cans or some other modern art material. Think Museum of Modern Art. Open your mind. A wild piece of art I saw one year at an outdoor museum was a stack of shopping carts in the shape of a giant Christmas tree, decorated with lights, to represent the shopping and consumer component of the holidays. Open your mind!

Ways to Start Your Own Traditions and Rituals

1. Think outside the box. If you want to celebrate your family being together at a particular time of year, then pick a date, a time and an event. This can be as simple as everyone making pizza together, or as complex as making up a “service” that your family enacts together on a particular hillside followed by a particular meal.

2. Incorporate traditions from all sides of the family and make them work in one day or one weekend or one week.

3. Look outside your family. As a ritual or tradition give back to the community by spending the holiday volunteering and giving to charity — not just with money, but with time and experience.