Life in The Family International

One of the odd things about our missionary homes is that we end up with a total mish-mash of cultural backgrounds, generations, social backgrounds and opinions living under one same roof. They say variety is the spice of life, and one of the spiciest times is during traditional holidays because everyone has their own traditional way to celebrate. Now, the point of tradition is to repeat it, but how do you repeat everyone’s particular ritual all at the same time?

For example, in our home we face the following decisions. What do we do?

Christmas Eve:

• Open the presents at midnight, and then party like there is no tomorrow
• Open the presents at midnight, and then sing Christmas carols
• Go out singing and open the presents whenever
• Eat your Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve and open the presents on Christmas morning
• Never open presents on Christmas morning
• Kids open their presents Christmas morning, adults open them that evening

Christmas Dinner:

• Turkey
• Barbeque
• Mole and Pozole and Mexican goodies
• Prepare everyone’s favorite dish
• Forget Christmas cooking, eat sandwiches and relax

Christmas Gifts:

• Play secret santa and make sure nobody’s gifts cost less than 20 USD
• Do not play secret santa because it institutionalizes the giving of gifts
• Buy no gifts and save the money for vacations
• Stuff Christmas stockings instead of giving gifts

Christmas Decorations:

• Decorate everything together one evening
• Appoint a decorating committee to ensure all baubles are color-coded and matching
• Allow the kids to decorate the house
• Never allow the kids to decorate the house

… And on the list goes. The cool thing about being a missionary and traveling around is that you learn to adapt, and often invent new traditions! I can’t wait to see what we’ll end up doing this year.

After many years of doing office-type missionary work, Florecita is testing her hand as a field missionary. She is currently the counselor of a group of teenagers, does outreach, restaurant singing… and anything that is needed to help her center and its projects keep momentum. She is also an aficionado of photography and hopes that with it she can show the world a little more of The Family International, its projects, and the wonderful people in it. More about Flo

This entry was posted on Monday, December 4th, 2006 at 8:20 am and is filed under Family Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.