Christmas traditions...

There was an article in December's Notebook magazine written by Sarah Bryden-Brown from Kidspot about finding your own Christmas traditions. It struck a chord with me as it is something that Kirk and I are quite aware of for various reasons this year. There are lots of lovely traditions that we are a part of, the first of which we attended today.

I come from a large family and my dad's side get together a few times throughout the year. Today my fresh and delightful Adelaide cousins were able to join us enroute to Nelson in NZ to be with their parents and brother over Christmas. There are thirteen cousins and now with partners and my kids there are twenty of us to exchange Kris Kringle gifts. My cousins are a special bunch of fun and caring people and I love getting together with them. They are the types of people whom you always feel better after having a conversation with. I am the eldest and I feel privileged to be a part of the Harris clan. My kids think that they are the cousins as mummy is too old (at 32!).

As I get older, I am finding that there is so much more joy in finding gifts for others and seeing them open them than there is in receiving. I gave my 22 year old cousin a Pantone mug and a black tshirt - he was stoked with both and esp the mug. He is a designer and colours, fonts, etc are his thing. I was unaware that there is a Pantone colour of the year - yellow is the colour of 2009 apparently. I love learning random bits of information! This week we sent a mug to Cornwall, UK. There is obviously a Pantone following across the world!

One of the tricky things is that there are cousins in Oxford, Cambridge, Adelaide, Melbourne and Nelson other than in Sydney so co-ordinating getting the gifts to each other can be quite a feat. It is a tradition that I hope that we continue.