The 12 Days

And so today marks the twelfth day of Christmas. We began on Christmas Day and opened a gift of some sort each day. Whether a family gift or an experience, the goal was to celebrate, slowly, intentionally and joyfully. 

At one point years ago, I found myself completely over the chaos of Christmas morning. Jesus can get lost in the flurry and that's the last thing we wanted. We decided to do something different and we have enjoyed the twelve days ever since. 

The goal is to keep a reasonable budget and each year we include some days where the gift is one we give. At some point each day, we read from our beautiful book "The 12 Days of Christmas" about the significance of each gift in the song, then we sing it and we always belt out the "5 golden rings"! Following the song, the gift is given. We have a ball with this and each year it looks a little different. We will celebrate Epiphany tomorrow and the Christmas tree will come down and all of the celebrations will be over until next year.

We've enjoyed every gift and every day and we will do this as long as it makes sense for our family. It's made the holidays feel like a season of savoring and enjoying and slowing down. And this is exactly what we wanted.