Moving Tradition

Other Elliot Christmas Traditions include... sushi and presents on Christmas Eve and breakfast in our stockings on Christmas morning. But traditions move and change with time and circumstance and with Christmas falling on a Sunday there obviously wasn't going to be any time for a leisurely breakfast on Sunday. (My husband had to preach at the 8 AM service in Goshogawara as well as the 10:30 AM service in Ajigasawa and the 6:30 PM service in Itayanagi.) So we moved it all forward and had our sushi - temaki sushi this year - afterwe got home from the Christmas Party at Goshogawara Church on the 3rd.

Sarah, Yuko & Luke, Shirley, Huan Huan, Abby, John, Mary, me and John

I think we originally started eating sushi because it was fast. We had to get to church and our kids were hungry, so I ran next door to the 24 hour convenience store and grabbed what looked the tastiest and easiest. (Instant noodles were out of the question.) Then we ate and ran.

The Christmas Eve we ate sushi (1980)

After the kids started leaving

but before we started having "extras".

Somewhere along the line it started having very little to do with convenience and everything to do with feeling like Christmas.

As for breakfast in our Christmas stockings... John's little sister gave Luke and Anna Christmas stockings but with no Santa Claus tradition I was a bit flummoxed. We didn't want to ignore her gift but we weren't about to introduce Santa just to use the stockings. I don't know what made me think of breakfast... maybe because morning is the traditional time for stockings. But its been breakfast ever since. But Sarah fills the stockings now.