For holidays, we celebrate xmas, but we also light a menorah because my mom was raised jewish and likes to do the menorah even though she converted to christianity. We also go to church on xmas eve to humor my dad, lol. One thing I'm doing for E this year that is a little less expensive is I'm making up an activity box and getting cheap stuff like pipecleaners, colored paper, glitter, and whatnot for crafts on a boring day. Maybe your kid isn't quite old enough for that, but I always like to do gifts that I kind of put together b/c its more fun for me! Also one thing that my mom and my sister and I did when we were little and I'm doing w/ E this year is we would make some cookies and hot chocolate and then take the treats and drive around looking at other people's xmas lights. Its pretty much free and fun to look at the lights.

My son's daycare is really cute because they don't celebrate any traditional/religious/state-recognized holidays because they don't want to exclude any kids who might not celebrate them or infuse them with a particular meaning when they might mean different things to different families. Instead, they make up their own holidays! For example, there is a bread baking holiday, where they bring in all different kinds of breads and the kids get to help bake some and learn about bread making. There are a bunch of other ones too. I love the idea of coming up with ways to celebrate focused around what the kids will learn from and enjoy.

Lyric and I just celebrate a winter holiday as we say. When we go to my mom's or my dad's - we end up doing Christmas. But her and I do lots of crafts to give to others if we choose. I didn't buy anything for anyone this year, except a pack of books for Lyric. We didn't celebrate Thanksgiving for many reasons. Since we had a few days off from school, I had a potluck with a bunch of friends and we watched the feminist 1970s movie called, "Born in Flames." It was an awesome no-alcohol fun weekend. *Heather* mama to L 9/25/2001

we celebrate chrismahonnakwanzaka as gabriel likes to call it. we basically get together as a family and have brunch and exchange gifts but only for the kids... we spend the rest of the day playing card and board games, maybe watching some movies... the adults also drink some spiked eggnog ;} we basically just hang out as a family it is alot of fun.