Holidays
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
RP from Parenting: Holidays and Religion... help!
So DH and I both believe in God, I'm a baptized Catholic (yet not practicing), and he's a non-denominational Christian. We don't go to church and although religion was in our families growing up, it wasn't in the forefront or really stressed and talked about daily. But we do pray privately, we do believe in God, we have faith and spirituality. My question is, how do I even BEGIN to teach my kids about the TRUE / religious meaning of Christmas? I want them to know it's about Jesus's birth and teach them about Mary and God and religion in general. I don't even know where to begin. I don't want my kids thinking Christmas is ONLY about presents and Santa. Anyone else sort of in the same boat? Any advice?
Re: RP from Parenting: Holidays and Religion... help!
I am not a parent, but it seems to me that there are several children's bibles or even children's books specific to Christmas that you could get for them/read to them.
Then, I would ensure that your Christmas has religious symbols alongside the secular....a Nativity. You can set it up while explaining to them why it is important to you to have in your home.
And perhaps attending a Nativity service at a church, even if you don't go regularly.
Wow. I don't have kids yet, but I could have written this post myself.
I agree with pp that maybe you could check out a local church for their Christmas services, even if you aren't a member. Children's books are also a good idea. Good Luck!
I'm coming at this from a completely different perspective, so bear with me.
My perspective: I'm Jewish and DH is Catholic. He doesn't practice, and hasn't in years, but his family does (his father was a Catholic priest for 30ish years). Waaaaay back when we were dating we had a discussion about how we were going to raise our children (for me, children and religion is a deal breaker). We're planning on raising our future children Jewish, but incorporating DH's family's holiday traditions of Christmas and Easter (since that's really all DH celebrates anyway).
Now my thoughts:
You mentioned you're not religious. I take that to mean you're spiritual, but don't necessarily align yourself with the practices of the Catholic religion (or Christian for your DH). You and DH have celebrated Christmas in the past, right? If you're not "religious" per se, then what are you really celebrating? This is something you have to decide for yourself. Are you celebrating the birth of Jesus? (My niece and nephew have a birthday cake for Jesus and sing "happy birthday" every year) IME, growing up with only Catholic friends and spending every Christmas with them and their families, Christmas was about more than just the birth of Jesus, and more than just presents and Santa. It was always about family, friends, and togetherness. For DH, Christmas was always about the return to his family. No matter where he was - at school, or work, he always knew that Christmas meant "going home."
When we have children, we're going to continue spending Christmas with his family. We both consider ourselves spiritual people and want to teach our children about ALL the world cultures and religions. Our mantra is "there is no single right path to G-d." So our explanation of Christmas will include both the idea of family, as well as the religious traditions that "daddy grew up with."
I don't have kids yet, so take what I say with a grain of salt. :-)
My family went to church regularly when I was young, so I'm sure that affected things, but I remember there being a lot of religious aspects to our holiday celebration. One of my favorite Christmas movies was "Small One," about the donkey Mary rode into Bethlehem. We sang lots of traditional Christmas hymns. We always had a nativity, and once I was old enough I got to set it up every year.
I was going to say that books and a nativity would be a good starting place, but do your kids already have some point of reference for God/Jesus? If you start talking about the Christmas story and Jesus, will they have heard of him before, or will this all be new?
Hmm...this is a tough question. I might head to a Christian bookstore and ask for some book recommendations on how to introduce religion to your children.