It seems that there is always a reason to celebrate. Halloween is quickly followed by Thanksgiving which is quickly followed by the winter days signaling Christmas in our house. Putting our son in a costume and seeing him smile changed something in my wife and I as parents. Going shopping for a pumpking and listening to our son call it his “ball” over and over again helped us understand the special nature of celebrating these holidays. Filling your house up with cobwebs, turkeys, and evergreen trees separates each season from the others and signals something special to look forward to (be it trick or treaters or the birth of a savior). My wife and I are sold on celebrating the upcoming holidays (something we didn’t always take the time for in the past). When it was just my wife and I we weren’t so concerned about tilting our heads to the left (or right) and seeing a Christmas tree or a spooky ghost hanging from the ceiling. The arrival of our son and his growth over the past year (mentally and physically) has led us to value these time and money consuming activities more than we ever would had we just been on our own.
Recently my wife decided that she wanted to dress up the house in the weeks preceding Christmas for our son to get into the spirit of the holiday. We have a fireplace with a mantel above it so she made sure to obtain some stockings with our names on them to adorn that part of the house. She’s been looking for somewhere to buy a tree and we’re slowly thinking about all of the things we can do to make our home feel like the upcoming holidays to give a sense of the season to our son. We have a picture of him as a baby sitting in front of a very small Christmas tree we bought last year (it came in a box). This year we’re thinking about getting a real one and putting it up after Turkey day. Hopefully he won’t knock it down (he couldn’t really walk a year ago).