Christmas traditions change

I have been making homemade Christmas gifts.

I spent the summer gathering and drying flowers and herbs, and I am reaping my harvest. I made bath salts infused with comfrey, nettles and lavender and bottled this mixture in blue jars. I made a cream to rub for tired feet with bergamot flowers. I used dried calendula flowers and rose hips and used these to make a face cream.

All my products turned out well. I have been scraping the lotion I make from the bottom of the blender and rubbing it on myself. I don't want to waste any of the oils and beeswax that I put into my products.

We don't have our Christmas tree up yet. I want to put up the smallest one that we can find. My friend, Mary called me over the weekend and asked if I knew where she could get a tree that was around 15 feet tall. She has a room with a high ceiling that she puts her tree up in. She wants the tree to be spectacular looking.

Last year her husband cut the top off a tree on their farm. Mary said it took her all day to get it positioned correctly and to keep it from toppling over. Her 12-year-old daughter Laura was in tears because the tree was so misshapen. This year Mary is on the search for the perfect tree. With the determination of her daughter Laura and herself, she will come close to getting a nearly perfect 15-foot tree.

My daughter-in-law Mary was very clever in putting her tree up this year. She and my son have a 1 1/2 year old little boy named Tommy. Mary decorated her tree with paper snowflakes that she cut out of white paper. This way Tommy can't break any of the decorations. Their tree looks very simple and elegant.

I remember when I had little ones and decoration after decoration would get knocked off the tree by curious little hands. The more kids I had the less decorations I put up because they kept getting broken.

My daughter, Mary, and her husband put only silver and blue decorations on their tree, as these are the colors of Hanukkah. Her husband David is Jewish and last year on Christmas Eve I made him potato latkes served with pear sauce and sour cream. I also made traditional Jewish Challah bread. These were foods he grew up with and he was very happy to have them on his first Christmas with our family.

I have learned more about different ways to celebrate this time of year from my son-in-law and daughter-in-law. They have made my life richer with the different traditions that they bring.

My sister, Kate's husband, Adrian, is from England. A tradition that he brought to their family is on Christmas day after the presents are unwrapped they have a champagne brunch. They stay at home with their immediate family, and Christmas is very relaxing for them.

A tradition we did in the past was on Christmas Eve my children and my husband and I went to Christmas Eve service with my parents at St. Theodore's Catholic Church in Albert Lea. After mass, we went to my parents' house where my mom made oyster stew. My kids never liked the oyster stew. My dad would finish off all their bowls of soup. I think my mom could have put the whole pot of oyster stew in front of my dad as he ate so much of it.

I carried on the tradition of making oyster stew a couple years after my dad died, but he wasn't there to clean up everyone's bowls. I will probably make potato latkes this year and the Challah bread. New traditions are taking over and they are making the holidays more fun and delicious.