As I begin my first blog post with Dad-O-Matic, first I just want to welcome you the reader, and acknowledge my fellow Dad-O-Matic bloggers, as well as Chris Brogan and Paisono. Without them we wouldn’t have this awesome community of parents.

Some background about me, I am a happily married husband of 11 years, and proud father of four absolutely wonderful, incredible, fascinating children. I have two girls and two boys. They were born in this sequence: girl, boy, boy, girl and are aged 11, 9, 4, and 2. How I met my wife is a romantic story in and of itself for another day.

My life began in 1970. I grew up with older parents. My dad was 47 when I was born and my mom was 36. You might not think that’s older, but to a 15 year old who’s dad is 62 and mom is 51, it sure felt that way! My disclaimer, I will be 51 when my youngest is 15, so I hope to have some perspective! And for those of you in that situation now, don’t feel bad about it! I loved my parents, I was just slightly embarrassed one day when a friend asked if I was with my grandparents! One thing I do know, I benefited from having older parents; from the wisdom and patience my parents had for having already raised 6 other children. My sister closest to me in age is actually 8 years older than I. And oh, I am the only child between my parents. We were like the Brady Bunch! Needless to say, I truly am trying to remember how I felt as a child, and teenager growing up. While I do hear myself echoing things my parents said to me, I also do my best to tackle parenthood with a fresher perspective.

From the fresher perspective category, growing up we didn’t have many traditions we followed during the holidays, other than the standard Christian traditions, such as recognizing Christ’s birth for Christmas and His resurrection for Easter. I do realize Christ’s birth and death are more monumental than a mere tradition, and I am not trying to downplay it. I am just trying to give you an idea of the lack of tradition in our house growing up. For example, my mom would be sure to put up a mistletoe, and we had the same Angel the capped the Christmas tree every year, and of course Santa got his milk and cookies. But the traditions were really limited. So when our first child came along, my wife and I decided we would start our own family tradition for Christmas. Something that we would do every year that would create a buzz around Christmas.

I’m not sure where I got the idea. Christmas, for me, had become a very commercial holiday because the true meaning was lost when merchants realized the profits they could make. So for many years I was a bah humbug kind of guy. It may be, one year that was how my parents did it, or I may have heard from others that it’s how they did it. It was a great way to create some suspense for Christmas, and hopefully some lasting memories for our children. This tradition we adopted for our family doesn’t really place any emphasis on Christ’s birth, however we do take the opportunity to share the story of Christ’s birth with them every year. And we share with our children the importance of His celebration.

So, you are probably wondering what this peculiar tradition is, correct? Well simply said, we do not put up our Christmas tree until the kids are in bed, asleep on December 24th. Every year on Christmas eve, I slip out, and I come home with the tree on top of the car. Sometimes I get a great deal on the tree as well! Then I hide it outside until the children go to bed. My wife usually wraps the gifts while I put up the tree. Then we will typically wake them around 3 or 3:30 am to show them Santa had visited and brought a tree for us too! The fatigue my wife and I have for being up so late is always erased by the smiles and excitement our children exhibit.

We also go ahead and let the kids open up their presents, taking turns so each one can show us all his or her new gift. Then it’s back to bed! And one always is sure to check and see if Santa actually ate his cookies and drank his milk. What I do like about waiting to get the Christmas tree on Christmas eve is that it also reduces the “present envy” to a bear minimum because once they see the tree with the presents underneath, they are usually so excited that they just want to open them up. Then they are too busy playing with ALL the toys, that it doesn’t matter who got the BIG box.

I hope you enjoyed a glimpse into our Christmas Tradition. What do you do?

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