I really never thought we had many Christmas Traditions, but looking back we had several. Remembering the few we had this year warms my heart as I leave behind a very difficult week. The closer Christmas has gotten the more difficult each day has been without Bill here.
For as long as I can remember, between Thanksgiving and Christmas Bill couldn't seem to get through without having a health crisis landing him (and me with him) in the hospital. We would always get home just in time for Christmas. It became "tradition". But that one isn't one we count.
Today I am remembering our Gingerbread house tradition. Each year we would make gingerbread houses and decorate them. Sometimes we would give them away to friends to cheer them up. Sometimes our children would have friends come over and decorate the houses together. One year we had church friends come and share in the adventure. One of our guests was about 85 years old and had never decorated a gingerbread house before. One year, we traveled to visit family over the holidays. We counted up how many families we were going to visit and we made a gingerbread house for each one. After the houses were complete and the icing dry we put each one in a cake box and wrapped it with Christmas wrapping paper. We didn't mark them so we had no idea when we gave one away which house it was going to be. We had a least ten houses with us to give away that year. We had so much fun giving them away to see which house each family received. We would then tell the story of who decorated that particular house and how they did it. Everyone was so surprised and delighted with their house. Some of them sprayed their house with a fixative spray and kept them for several years.
We haven't been able to keep our Gingerbread house tradition in recent years. But this year our granddaughter is 3 1/2 and ready to carry on the tradition. We had to start our tradition for a new generation. This year however my oven has decided to quit so I could not bake the gingerbread cookies. So our son did the baking and the building ahead of time. Today we gathered at his house to reinstate our Gingerbread house tradition. We added three new decorators to the family in addition to our granddaughter. We added our new daughter-in-love, her mother and her grandmother. Grandmother decided to rock her great grandson to sleep instead. Always as treasured moment!
I know Bill would have been right by Marley's side helping her decorate her house this year. I'm deeply saddened that he didn't get to experience this treasured tradition with her. I can even hear his voice helping her plan and listening to her ideas as he did with his own sweet children as they decorated their first gingerbread houses.
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