Holiday Traditions

We spent yesterday engaged in some holiday readiness exercises. Larkin was very excited to make popcorn and cranberry garlands and spent about 4 hours working on them with great focus. I worked along with her about half that time while Finn scrambled about our feet eating all the fallen bits of popcorn.

When I retired my needle and thread, Larkin asked me to read to her while she worked. Expecting her to choose some festive, holiday-related book, I was somewhat surprised when she chose "History!" We've been reading a young person's adaptation of Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States and Larkin is hooked. She chose the chapters on World War II and Civil Rights, so we had detailed, cheery discussions of racism and the Holocaust while making Christmas decorations. The next chapter is on Vietnam which has been getting lots of lip service in our house recently, so she's pretty excited about that.

Our last Christmas tree was a glorious live giant sequoia which, unfortunately, didn't survive our dry summer. Now that we know we need to water it a couple of times in its first few dry seasons, we wanted to replace it with another one this year. There was only one giant sequoia left at the co-op, and it was a somewhat small and spindly specimen which clearly needed a good home. Larkin and Finn wanted to continue the tradition (can something be a tradition if you've only done it once?) of decorating solely with homemade fused bead projects.

So we pretty much totally obscured our little tree with decorations. What says "Christmas" to Larkin and Finn? Aliens.

And the ship they flew in on.

A small herd of ponies.

'Shrooms.

And, of course, what would Christmas be without velociraptors?

While we were decorating, I asked if they would like me to put on some Christmas music. Larkin's response? "YEAH! How about Firewater?"

We had a long car conversation when Larkin and Finn asked about the religious aspects of Christmas. I believe I began with something like: "So... Jesus was supposedly the son of God, right? But his mother was human..." and it only went downhill from there. It was, perhaps slightly more knowledgeable than my subsequent explanations of Hanukkah and Kwanzaa. The conversation naturally led to other holidays. Finn was particularly confused about why people thought an Easter Bunny and easter eggs were the obvious way to celebrate Jesus coming back to life. I couldn't really help him there, but I am motivated to help them find out more about the history behind modern holiday traditions.

So hey-- may the aliens land safely among your decorations this holiday season!