Kids Making Miracles Candlelight Ceremony &Amp: Fill & Download for Free

In the Southestern US, most people keep things very traditional. Traditions vary by family, but most include very kid-centric, magical ideas. As someone who has celebrated Christmas in the South since 1994, when I began dating my now ex-hubby, I can tell you what I've experienced as his family is very Southern, from South Carolina Southern.PreparationThis is a big part of the Southern Christmas experience. We all have a small gift shop called “The Pink Magnolia” or “Sassy Butterfly” or “Sweetpea’s Cottage” we can visit to purchase necessary decorations for our home like door hangers and Christmas pillows like this:It's important our entire house is decorated. We usually use Pottery Barn and Southern Living as our guide - knowing we will never be able to have white couches, real garlands hanging over our beds, special Christmas flannel sheets, or well-groomed kids quietly playing with wooden toys under their own, personal Christmas tree decorated in vintage ornaments. Fantasy:Pottery BarnReality:Bored pandaPsychcentralBut we try.We also are determined to take the perfect photo for our annual Christmas card - a huge Southern tradition. We usually include a letter bragging about all our family’s awesomeness and how great we are doing and how perfect our kids are, getting straight A’s and not spilling grape juice on our white couch. Again,Fantasy:Digital photos 101Reality:Huff postWe cook a lot. We use a lot of butter. If you don't believe me watch Paula Deen make anything for Christmas. We also clip lots of recipes from our bible, Southern Living magazine.Southern LivingWe would love to make roasted winter vegetables with homemade cranberry sauce and baked and roasted pork loin with mint glaze. The recipes usually call for about 24 ingredients, so we end up serving our green bean casserole which calls for 2 cans of green beans, mushroom soup and Durkey’s friend onions,Campbell's.comCanned cranberry sauce (served with the can marks still on it), a turkey we pick up from Bojangles.OceansprayAnd a Honey Baked Ham, so there will be left overs for sandwiches Christmas Day.HoneybakedChristmas EveMany families attend late night or midnight church services. There is often a candlelight ceremony and singing of traditional Christmas music like “Silent Night,” and “O’ Holy Night.”What the kids wear is very important.theyre just going to be shipped off to the church nursery, but, in case someone sees them … Little girls often can be seen in smocking dresses with big bows in their hair. Boys also get put into smocking pantsuits. Personally, I think these look atrocious. Like Little Lord Fontleroy outfits. They wear knee socks and saddle shoes. Poor Southern boys.As I mentioned, although Christmas is about children and family, in the South, it's also very religious, and so, our precious angels are sent to the basement nursery so folks can pray properly without being interrupted by giggles, questions, off-key singing and laughter.Back at home, the kids put milk and cookies out for Santa on a special plate we’ve gotten as a wedding present from a shop called “The Pink Magnolia” or “The Sassy Butterfly.” It was, inevitably wrapped in silver and ecru reversible paper and included a formal calling card.Sometimes we've made a plate with the kids’ handprints when they were small. Both Grandparents also have similar plates because that's what the grandchildren gave them as gifts that year.Our Santa plate has sometimes been one handed down from our mothers. On the back we continue the tradition of recording who used it and the year it's being used in black sharpie stored with the plate as to not mix colors and destroy the esthetic of the writing through generations. Inevitably, a child will break this plate and we will spend Christmas morning gluing it together or tossing it in our trash with the promise to find one similar at the Wal-Mart and transfer the historic information, pretending it's original when we pass it to our own daughter.We also “feed Santa’s reindeer” by leaving carrots on our front stoops. We also purchase small bags of “reindeer food” at The Pink Magnolia. This special food is basically birdseed mixed with glitter. But it's totally worth the $8-$10 to see your kids’ joy when your yard is covered in glitter until April when you mow the grass again.PranksWe Southerners have a great sense of humor. Especially when we have too many “hot toddies” or “spiked ciders.” Most neighborhood pranks occur while on a break from putting together a doll house or bike at 2 am. We sneak next door and make the light up reindeer have sex or put one of our empty wine bottles in the hand of the giant snowman doll sitting in our neighbor’s front porch rocking chair from Cracker Barrel.This guy needs a wine bottle.Apparently, we find this hysterical every year. White Christmases are rare in most of the South, but, when there is snow, it's obvious who the culprits inserting empty wine bottles in porch decorations are. It's the most fun.The Present Opening BattleSome families open a present on Christmas Eve. In fact the families who do open presents Christmas Eve vs the ones, like me who think this is a travesty and presents should only be opened Christmas morning, will openly argue this point all year-round.At bedtime, we make sure the kids are dressed in their cutest matching Christmas pajamas because this is important for the photos we will take. Girls will have a matching bow bigger than their head as a completion to the Christmas ensemble.EtsyChristmas MorningWe’ve prepared ahead for our Pottery Barn perfect Christmas morning, beginning with the kids dressed in their special, $42 pajamas (provided no one had an accident last night) and we’ve put together the traditional breakfast casseroles consisting of some combination of sausage, ham, bacon, eggs, cheeses served with biscuits and grits. Parents are exhausted from putting together the “presents from Santa” all night and hungover from all the wine we consumed to not kill each other during said putting together of Santa presents.Parents have already been downstairs, sprinkling baby powder on the floor to look like snow, biting the (now stale) cookies and (now old) carrots and drinking the (now sour) milk our cherubs left on the special Santa plate, to further perpetuate the fantasy of a fat man sliding down the chimney in the middle of the night.In our family, we start with stockings which have hung over the fireplace for a month and are now dusty and ripped from being filled with candy and other treats to energize the children this early morning. This will always backfire as the kids eat too much candy, refuse the casserole we’ve slaved over and crash before the Macy’s Christmas Parade comes on.The candy also makes it impossible for children to sit still if they do make it to “our perfect family breakfast,” and cranky because they haven't been able to unwrap presents yet.Patience is a Virtue - except on ChristmasEvery year we try to make the experience last. Draw it out. Get the perfect photo we can send to Grandma of her little darlings wearing the itchy scarf and gloves she sent. Hopped up on sugar and carbs, all the kids want to do is rip through as many presents as possible, searching for the only one they really wanted.This is when the traditional fight happens.Parents: Slow down. Let other people have a chance to open presents. Let's take turns so we can write down who gave us our gifts for the special holiday thank you notes I got you from The Pink Magnolia. Put your arm around your sister. Your bow is blocking her face.Kids: Nooooooo. I need to open everything as quickly as possible acting like spoiled brats and not appreciating anything, not even the breakfast casserole you made, or the effort you went through to make this day seem as magical as possible, even drinking sour milk and eating gross carrots before you've had coffee to keep my belief in a fat guy in a red suit alive!!!!Y’all come back …After it's over. Parents clean up the paper in giant lawn bags, kids pass out from their sugar rushes, and talks about seeing neighbors for lunch and a “nice walk around the neighborhood later” are normal, but never happen. The rest of the day is spent watching bad Christmas specials on the Hallmark channel, breaking up fights and letting the children gorge themselves on the terrible cookies and Aunt Melba’s bunt cake so parents don't have to move off the couch. At about 1:00, someone announces, “It’s 5 o’clock somewhere, and more wine is produced.” Thank goodness for that Honey Baked Ham so we can have sandwiches on the leftover breakfast biscuits.It's a Christmas miracle.