Winter Break

Christmas has always been a special day for my family, aswell as for many others. It was always a day that we all waited for anxiously and with much anticipation.
My mom and aunt would make christmas most memorable for the kids, showing us that many families try to make the holidays great for the little ones. The day before Christmas Eve my mom would always help me bake cookies, write a letter and leave a can of Coca- Cola for "Santa Clause" it turned into something that my cousins and I shared and did togeather. Once Christmas Eve came the whole day would be spent cooking enought food for the whole family. At around 8 pm we would pack up all the gifts and head to my Aunts house. Once there the whole family would get togeather and celebrate until midnight. When the clock striked midnight we would finally eat then open up all our gifts, this tradition has stayed with my family for many years.
I noticed that the younger you are the more gifts you would receive. As a little girl I would get more than one gift from everyone in tha family. From Barbie doll,play houses,anything that I would be able to play with. Now that I'm older they still try to make christmas one of the best days of the year but the gifts have gones down.
This year during Christmas everyone did their best to try an make it like others, not only with the economic crisis but with other rising problems, my family tried to make the best of it. Once again it was spent at my Aunts house and presents were opened at midnight. Culture wise, i believe Christmas shows us how much we value materialistic things. Especially this year, the christmas spirit was not in the air. The economic crisis really brought down everyones spirit for this christmas. People werent really worried about the traditinal part of it, more about "what presents will we give?" "how expensive will they be?" and "will we even be able to give these thing out?" It really is sads to see that during a time in which we should think about Jesus and be grateful spending time with our familes, we think about how the materialistic things will negativtly affect our christmas experience.
Christmas shouldn't be this way, ofcourse everyone enjoys gettin a gift or two, but shouldn't we focuse on the traditions that were brought down to us? I don't think this would be a easy thing for many people to do, which is once again something sad to see.