Friday, December 13, 2013

Family and Christmas

Happy Pinkie Day!!!  We made it another week.  An adventurous, busy, Christmas-filled week.  We are still decorating for Christmas here at our home and we started baking all our Christmas goodies for our family and friends.  Emmett made sugar cookies for Pinkie Day, we made a sign (which we will show you next week!), and made gifts for Daddy.  We delivered goodies to the neighbors yesterday.  I feel like it is a real loss in our culture that we don't know our neighbors well and can practically never show up at someones house unannounced.  We tend to drive into our driveways and close the garage door behind us.  We go out to get the mail while looking down at the ground the whole way.  We take out the trash in the same manner.  I think our new neighbors were shocked that we delivered homemade baked goods to their door yesterday.  They just looked down at the container and have a such surprised looks on their faces.  I should just tell them I like to pretend we live on the frontier.

Speaking of the frontier, we also went to a field trip to the Frontier Culture Museum in Staunton.  http://www.frontiermuseum.org/ We learned all about how Christmas was celebrated by different cultures who came here to America and then came to blend their cultures together to form some of the traditions we have today.  So many of the traditions revolved around community and neighbors.   Settlers would go from house to house and sing and dance and play games.  Where has this tradition GONE???  Waiting in line at Michael's Crafts today, I thought about it. No one is HOME!  They are all in line at Michael's!  I just love the Frontier Culture museum.  I love bringing my children there and showing them what a different time it was back then.  That is why Pinkie Day is so important to us.  It is a time for family and sharing and singing and visiting.  So get your rolling pin out, bake some cookies for your neighbor and go knock on their door...wait for it...without even calling (or texting) first!  Happy Pinkie Day, everyone!
"Here we come a wassailing", at the English House
Throwing beans at the window of the German house to get them to come out and greet us
Learning about holiday foods the settlers prepared for Christmas
Learning about St. Nicholas Day at the German house

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