Holiday Traditions: The Winter Village

Last year I wrote extensively (perhaps excessively?) about our Winter Village (here and here), but it's one of my favorite traditions of the season, so here I go again. My mom had this wonderful little village of tiny wooden houses, trees, people, fences and even a train. One of my favorite things to do at Christmas time when I was young was to set up, arrange and rearrange the village (I've always been a sucker for tiny things). A few years back, C's grandmother gave me some houses and people of the exact same type as my mother's village (it's possible she gave them to M when he was very small and they would have constituted a choking hazard, so I appropriated them). I began setting up my own little village--which is much less extensive than my mom's--for Christmas. Last year I hinted that I'd like her to give me hers, and this year I asked flat out. She decided, however, that it would be easier for my dad to make me a whole new village than for her to find hers in storage (they are now currently living in a scaled-down home, with a Norfolk Island pine for a Christmas tree).

So they sent me these:

I had already ordered little wooden trees and snowmen for E and Z to put into the goodie bags at their school, and I had six extra of each, so poof, instant village. I loved the way they looked all white and clean bare wood, and was loathe to paint them. I probably should have kept them white, because, despite what I thought was a genius plan for making windows and doors (I made a rubber stamp with a block of wood and tiny rectangles of craft foam), they didn't turn out well.

The boys of course want to bomb the village (that would be M) or attack it with a giant papier mache reindeer (E and Z)...but it's all made from wood and pretty bomb/reindeer proof.

I don't have a lot of fancy or delicate Christmas decorations (the "breakable" ornaments have stayed in a box ever since M pulled the tree over when he was one), but I love that the ones we do have are also playthings that spark the imagination of my children. Yesterday, E and Z played with this set-up involving two paper houses C's mom made, a paper tree that chocolates came in, three little gnomes we made last year and the pipe cleaner Grinch and troll I made for at least half an hour while I worked on the computer.

Holiday Traditions: Getting the Tree

When I was a little girl, I wanted nothing more (OK, I'm sure I wanted a lot more, but you get the idea) than to go out and chop down a wild tree for our Christmas tree. We had a little artificial tree that was so short it had to stand up on the cube--an avant garde piece of furniture my dad built--with a piece of white quilt batting tucked around its base to represent snow (we set the Christmas village up on this snow...more on that later).

As our family and our ornament collection grew, we started buying full-sized live trees from one of the many Christmas tree lots that pop up this time of year, but still it wasn't the same as that Micky Mouse cartoon where he goes out with his axe and cuts down the tree Chip and Dale live in...that's what kind of Christmas tree I wanted.

So the first year C and I lived together in a little apartment in Englewood, Colorado, we got a permit to collect a tree on Forest Service land. We had to go all the way to Colorado Springs on a designated Saturday in December, but we also got to get our picture taken with Smokey Bear.

Choosing the perfect tree is a bit like choosing the perfect campsite--you start out kind of casually looking around, taking everything in, letting possibilities settle into your mind, but not deciding on anything, until you start to feel a bit tired and like you've covered the same ground a few too many times. Then you narrow it down to two or three options and you go over the pros and cons of each one and kind of let the perfect choice rise to the top on its own merits.

That first year we found the perfect little tree for our little apartment. It even had a tiny bird's nest in one of the branches. Our apartment was long and narrow, with a very dark living room that we didn't use much. I want to say we kept our tree up until Valentine's day that year, until the needles rained down at the slightest whisper of air.

The next year, living in Maine in an even smaller apartment in a converted barn, we began our tradition of collecting a tree on C's dad's land, which we continue today (no Smokey Bear here, unfortunately). Once we built and moved into our house we didn't even have to drive to the woods, but now walk out our door and down our trail to the "Christmas Tree Forest"--an area that was cut over some years ago and now grows thick with young balsam fir.

Our children have always accompanied us, in the sling, the backpack, or the sled (now they can walk, though I did take the sled because E and Z were a bit tired and cranky by the time we left home, and I towed each half-way). They have little patience for the tree selection process, and want to take the first tree they see (Z had already spied one near our driveway, in the opposite direction, and I needed to humor him and walk up there and see it while everyone else headed into the woods--to avoid turning Christmas-tree-getting into yet another battle-of-wills) which is usually much too big, or lop-sided, or in any case does not conform to our process!


Before cutting the tree, we say a few words thanking it for bringing light and joy into our winter darkness, and when the season's done (Jan 6), I drag its dry and brittle corpse back into the woods (though not quite as far as where we collected it usually) to return to the soil it came from. It's so much more dignified than sitting by the curb, waiting for the trash truck to take it away.

In years past we've gotten the tree on Saturday and set it up and decorated it on Sunday, and at least once gotten it on Sunday and decorated it the following Saturday, but this year we managed to cut it, bring it in (still dripping melted snow), and begin decorating it Sunday afternoon into evening. E, Z and I finished the decorating Monday morning.

Please join me...

in a Happy Dance.

I just had an essay accepted for publication in the Spring issue of Brain, Child: The Magazine for Thinking Mothers!!!

I should probably be all calm, cool, and collected about it, but I'm way to psyched to hold it in.

What? You don't subscribe to Brain, Child? Quick, go do so now so you'll be the first to read my essay!

Holiday Traditions: New Celebrations

I have always wanted to include the winter celebrations of other cultures into our holiday season. One year I went to one of my sister's friend's house on St. Nicholas Day, and they had made special bread and stew and each person in the family had a pair of painted wooden shoes into which St. Nicholas had left presents. I'd love to have wooden shoes like that for everyone in my family (though I don't really want to add another gift-getting holiday to the season).

I checked out a few "Christmas in..." books from the library, and am trying to incorporate some other traditions into ours (my personal favorite is Krampus, the devil-like character who accompanies St. Nicholas and either whips bad children with a willow-switch or takes them away in his basket/bag and throws them into the fiery pits of hell--depending on how cranky their mother is feeling when they won't get ready for bed).

My plan is to celebrate one holiday every weekend--St. Nicholas Day, St. Lucia Day, Winter Solstice, Christmas Eve and Day, Boxing Day, New Years Eve and Day and Epiphany/Twelfth Night. Conveniently, many of these holidays fall on Sunday this year. In the future we may need to celebrate "St. Nicholas Day, observed." That's OK too.

To start out St. Nicholas Day Sunday, the boys headed straight out to play in the new snow

(Imagine loving snow so much you were out trying to sled at 7:15 a.m.??!--instead of so lazy you take the picture out the window.)

Later we made Spekulatius cookies, which are soo delicious I will need to invest in Spekulatias molds like these for the future (I just used the Joy of Cooking recipe, but there are several others online; and I just used cookie cutters since I don't have the forms--and we ate them so fast I never even took pictures!). I'd LOVE to find one shaped like Krampus! In the past, I've done Christmas cookies in a big rush a day or two before (I think even once on the day after--but that may have been candy). I've also (before I had kids) made a ton ahead of time and frozen them for gifts. However, we don't have a lot of freezer space, and I kind of like the idea of making a different kind of cookie each weekend related to the celebration and just eating them, instead of saving them for a day when you have too much to eat anyway. Next week, for St. Lucia Day, it will be gingerbread and, if I get really ambitious, saffron rolls. I'll keep you posted.

Then we went out and got out tree (more on that later this week) and went to the caroling/tree lighting at the Town Office and put the lights and some of the ornaments onto our own tree after dinner. All--n-all not a bad first St. Nicholas Day celebration, even without wooden shoes or Spekulatusforms.

Because I have an aversion to craft foam...

I got the big idea to not only man a booth at the Make-A-Craft fair at M's school on Saturday, but to actually provide the craft. So Thursday night found me bending dozens of pipe cleaners into little body shapes and, with the invaluable help of my knitting night friend Edna, cutting out little felt dresses and shirts. Friday night I made little signs for how to do the craft, threaded every embroidery needle I own, and secretly hoped my craft would look too complicated for anyone to try.

It didn't. Kids streamed through throughout the morning, some of them returning for a second go. Even the moms got into it--one mom snatched the little doll from her son's hands and two more came and made their own after business at their own booths died down.

While it was fairly easy to work one-on-one with a single kid, when three or four came along, it was madness. Even with the fifth-graders, while they could pretty much do the craft on their own, I had a constant queue waiting for knot-tying and needle-threading. Imagine teachers with 15 or 20 kids and they have to teach them to read and do long division and zip their coats?? Hats off to them, for sure. Anyone who complains about how much teachers get paid, or our student-teacher ratio at the next budget meeting should be forced to run a booth at the Make-A-Craft fair.

I had the kids with me and hoped M would take his brothers around to different booths, like our neighbor used to for M before he went away to high school, but M only wanted to run around with his buddy. After the first two hours there, E and Z finally got up enough nerve to go and try out crafts (and E won the cakewalk!).

Working Mother

For eight-and-a-half years I have had straddled two different worlds--with one foot in Working Mother Land and the other in Stay At Home Mother Land. I was fortunate to be able to take a full year off after the birth of both M and the twins (but I should have gotten two years off with them, doncha think?), and to work 3/5 time ever since. In this way I've gotten the best--lazy jammie days, trips to the park, holding my kid when he's hurt or sad; peeing by myself in the office bathroom, eating lunch with no one on my lap in my cubicle, wearing "grown-up" clothes-- and worst--days that feel like neverending nurse- or cook- or clean- or whine-a-thons, playdates, feeling overworked and underappreciated; rushing to get out the door in the morning, making up for eight hours of face time in 20 minutes, feeling overworked and underappreciated--of both worlds.



It's been fun to be able to take kids to music or gymnastics or the children's museum (oh those overscheduled children!); to go on hikes or make cookies or, yes, to put them in front of the TV and have some time to myself. The blogging, writing and crafting I've done in the last few years would have been difficult, if not impossible, on a full-time work schedule. And I've been able to relate to moms in both camps--yes both have their advantages, but both can really be torture at times as well (although I do have my opinion--which I won't share--about which is worse, or at least harder).



Now, in just a little over a week, I'll be cut out of one camp and into the other--Working Mother (should I get a subscription to the magazine now?). The one who pays someone else to raise her kids. Who is not on the inner circle at the playground (OK, I've never been on the inner circle anywhere). Already I feel the effects. Last week I ran into a woman whose child (I can't even remember if it was a boy or girl--see how much I pay attention) was in E and Z's music class last year. Because I know absolutely nothing about this woman except that her kid (boy? girl?) was in music, I asked, "You guys still doing music?" and when she answered enthusiastically in the affirmative and asked the same of me, I didn't want to say, "Ugh, god no, I'm so over that" (which is how I feel), but instead said, "No, the boys are in preschool now." But when she said, "At least you have some time to yourself now," I should have just smiled and nodded, but instead said, "Well, I work when they're at school, so not really," which I'm sure sounded like, "Uh, I work," to her, which isn't how I intended it to sound, but now that I'm a full-time WM and no longer a part-time SAHM, apparently I can only speak one language.

Holiday Traditions: Book Advent

Once again we are counting down to Christmas in books. I described our book advent calendar, for which I wrap up one (or more) books for each day from Dec 1-24, last year. I label each package, which is wrapped in some plain green newsprint-type paper (which is used for putting under hardwood floors--gotta love living with a carpenter--not sure if this stuff is available at your average hardware store or not, but if it is you should totally invest in a roll; this is the third year we've wrapped 24 books with the same roll, as well as other presents here and there, and at least part of the roll is under our floor), with the date (so the Hanukkah book comes out on Hanukkah, and the Night Before Christmas comes out the Night Before Christmas) and the name of kid who is to open it, to prevent fistfights (one hopes).

This year I created another undercover crate (more Flower Fairies!) to hold the wrapped books---from there I suppose they'll move to the open bookshelf and get read more than once, perhaps.

I was up late Monday night attempting to wrap 24 books/book pairs without tape (because of my anti-plastic shtick, I haven't bought tape all year--the irony is that my husband was sitting at the computer estimating how much it would cost to fill his customers' houses with plastic--have I never mentioned this is what he does for a living? Kinda makes my roll of tape seem insignificant, but it's the principle of the thing) when I realized I could go to bed with only about half of them wrapped--I had 24 days in which to finish after all--and who would notice? Of course immediately upon getting up, E began pawing through the books, causing the red yarn I had used to hold the paper on to slip off some of the packages, and noted, "I don't have the most!" and when Z got up, he did the same, asking, "Is this all of them." Damn preschool, why did they have to teach them how to count?

At bedtime when it was E's turn to open the first book, Z had a huge crying fit and I threatened to unwrap them all myself and forget the whole thing. Do you ever wonder if, despite your best intentions, you do more harm than good and should just sit your kids in front of the TV with a big bag of Doritos?

Usually family or friends give each kid an advent calendar (or more), but this year they didn't. I briefly considered looking for one when I was out on Sunday, but then I reasoned I'd have to buy three (taking turns can be really really hard sometimes), and I just didn't feel like adding one more disposable thing to my life right now. I saw some kits at the fabric store for making little pocket wall hanging calendars, which I might consider doing in the future, but that still leaves the problem of one or three? As well as what to put in the pockets? I want to get away from the idea of this time of year being about stuff, so I definitely don't want to give a gift (or even a piece of candy) to my kids every day for the 24 days leading up to the biggest greedy day of them all. Maybe putting a piece of our winter village in each pocket, which I saw here last year (I think we actually have an old felt pocket calendar that was C's growing up that I could use)...or maybe we can just be content with our book advent.