Our Crazy Quilt of Christmas Traditions

As a young boy, I grew up in Northern Indiana. My family lived near Amish country. Many summers my grandmother would take me to Shipshawana. One of the things that she loved to look at were the crazy quilts. They are hand-made and full of bright patterns and different colors and fabrics. Basically a crazy quilt is mismatched pieces that form a beautiful whole. This is what our Christmas Tradtions have started to mimic. The crazy quilt of our Christmas tradtions is made up of some African holiday fun, family ideas, missionary ingenuity, and American classics. This assortment of activities have become a beautiful pattern to our family.

The No-Snow Man-

One of the the newer tradtions that our family has started has been making a snowman. In West Africa??? Yes, making a snowman.
Patty read about this idea in Family Fun. Just a few cardboard boxes, cotton batting, pom-poms for eyes (no coal here), add an African kente strip for a scarf, and voila! Our Ghana Snowman.

The Cookies, Snacks, and Candy Making

Patty grew up in a family that loves different kinds of holiday treats, and let's just say my own German roots love getting fat around the holidays, so it has led to tons of baking with the children around the holiday season. One thing that makes many of these things so special is that they are not available here in Ghana, or are too expensive to make but once a year. At the beginning of December the aprons and ovens mitts are donned and flour covers little faces. The girls love to help make each treat. The list of sweets consist of sugar cookies (cut out and decorated), Mom M's special thumb print mints, heath-bars, .payday bars, peanut butter fudge, white chocolate pretzels, and scotcharoos. We even added another one to the list... chocolate-covered cherries. After a few extra pounds and ten or twelve sugar buzzes, the treats are made and consumed!

Christmas Hut-

This tradition was given to our family from Ghana. In the villages of Ghana many children build Christmas Huts. On the 24th of December the children will cut down Nim Tree and Palm Branches. They then place four large branches in the ground to act as support beams. After the support beams are up, branches are placed for rafters, and the children begin to weave the leaves and sticks into walls for their hut.

Many children will spend hours decorating their huts. They use flowers, feathers and other beautiful things to complete the house. In many village the people decided which house is the most beautiful and praise the children that work the hardest.

The belief is that Mary and Joseph will visit the village on their way to Bethelehem and will pick the nicest Christmas Hut to stay in. The children also get the joy of sleeping outside. Most families allow their children to sleep in their Christmas House all night.

Our family has tried to adopt this practice. There are no Nim trees around our house, and the compound that we live in is concrete, so there is no way to dig holes for our support beams. These facts mean that our family has to improvise. We cut down palm branches for the front of our house and then construct a hut, Indian teepee stlye. The kids love it! They decorate it with flowers and play in it all day on the 24th. They do not sleep in it, but they love this African tradition that we have added to our holiday season.

Manger and Baby Jesus-

Christmas time is very exciting, but also very different from our normal schedule. Patty read about this idea and felt that it would teach good lessons and also help the girls to learn to control themselves at this hyper festive season.




At the beginning of December we set out a manger - a small open box wrapped in brown paper. Next to the box is a large bowl of local broom straws (our hay). Each day the children know that they are being watched. If they perform an act of kindness or are obedient right away then they get the chance to put a straw in the box.

We tell the children that the box is going to be like a manger, and on Christmas day we will have a baby doll that will represent baby Jesus. If they are kind and obedient, then when Jesus comes he will have a soft, nice bed, but if they are selfish and disobedient then he will find a cold, hard bed.

The girls really liked this. Many times Ella would say to Carey, "You better be nice, or Jesus' bed will be hard!" Their faces would light up when they had the chance to put straw inside.

On Christmas morning before our family read the Christmas Story, the manger was laid out on the couch and the girls were able to see the doll wrapped in swaddling clothes.


Our Gingerbread House-

First, I have to say that graham crackers are almost impossible to find in Ghana or are very expensive, so that is the reason that our family has used gingerbread and not graham crackers to build our house. Second, gingerbread is really not that hard to make and is a bit easier to use then graham crackers. Anyways, each year around the time our family makes our trip to Accra, we begin to collect candy and treats to decorate our gingerbread house with.

Each year the gingerbread house is made and then given to the children that attend a party that we have for friends. The house is "ooed" and "aahed," and then eaten. It normally takes only about ten minutes for the whole thing to be wolfed down.

These things together with many more little things make up our Crazy Quilt of Christmas Traditions. Tradtions are a wonderful thing to have in the family. Whether they are simple things like opening a present the night before Christmas or having large parties, no matter what a family does, make it special. Like Matt Sexton once said, "It is easy to be boring!"

I hope this post finds each of the readers enjoying their after-holiday glow and able to remember great tradtions that they took part in this holiday season.