The past weeks I have been sharing to some of my Mommy friends the Christmas traditions we (JA, Andi and I) have been doing throughout the years. Most were learned from our friends from church. Some we have made up on our own. I was encouraging them to build their own traditions as a family.

This is our (JA and I) 5th Christmas together and our 3rd with our daughter Andi. I was thinking of why I loved these traditions and what it meant to me personally and what it meant to our family. Here are the reasons why we do Christmas traditions.

1. It is a deliberate effort to bring us back to what Christmas really means. It makes us come up with activities and events that will make us remember that this season is supposed to be Christ-centered.

2. It makes us put into priority time with family as we map out and block off dates when we will put up our tree, when we will do our Advent dinner, when we will watch our chosen Christmas movie, when we will sit down and write what we are grateful for for this year and what are faith goals are for the coming year, when we will have our yearly Christmas photo shoot, just to name a few.

3. We purposefully use these to teach and pass on not just traditions, but values to our child and future children: That Christmas is about Jesus Christ and God’s gift of love for mankind, the value of family (and also friends), the value of giving and blessing others (as an overflow of what God gave to us and blessed us with).

4. We do it to have fun and to build lasting and beautiful memories.