For not really being “singers”—and for most of us not really knowing that much about music—we are a pretty “sing-ee” family! We love to sing hymns and worship songs while we’re driving or sitting around the living room. If one of our pianists is here (Kara and Cami), it’s even better! At Christmas time, we really getting into the singing spirit! We love to memorize a complete carol (all the verse) and sing it together; we love to drive around looking at lights and have someone lead out when a certain decoration or sight reminds him of a carol; we love to “sing through the Christmas story.”

Several years ago as we were sitting around singing carols, we challenged the kids to sing a song about a certain part of the nativity story (one part at a time). Before we knew it, we had compiled an entire “cantata” (roflol!) singing through the Christmas story. Cami quickly found the words to all of the carols and made a colorful song sheet on the computer for everybody—and we have since enjoyed “singing through the Christmas story” quite often.

Below are the songs that we sing in the order that we sing them, along with links to the words to each one. Obviously, there are others that would also fit, but these are the ones we discovered and have enjoyed singing. Happy caroling!

1. “O Little Town of Bethlehem” https://www.allthingschristmas.com/music/lyrics.html#olittletown

2. “The First Noel” https://www.allthingschristmas.com/music/lyrics.html#firstnoel

3. “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” https://www.allthingschristmas.com/music/lyrics.html#hark

4. “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear” https://www.allthingschristmas.com/music/lyrics.html#itcameupon

5. “Silent Night” https://www.allthingschristmas.com/music/lyrics.html#silentnight

6. “O Come, All Ye Faithful” https://www.allthingschristmas.com/music/lyrics.html#ocomeallye

7. “Away in a Manger” https://www.allthingschristmas.com/music/lyrics.html#awayinamanger

8. “O Holy Night” https://www.allthingschristmas.com/music/lyrics.html#oholynight

9. “We Three Kings of Orient Are” https://www.allthingschristmas.com/music/lyrics.html#wethreekings

10. “Joy to the World” https://www.allthingschristmas.com/music/lyrics.html#joy

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Merry Christmas from Language Lady and Character Ink Press! It is the time of good cheer, festivities, magical moments with children, celebrating the Nativity–AND grammar errors galore! Usage errors are to be expected since many of the things we are writing this time of year are things we only write once a year. It’s hard to remember grammar and usage protocols that we use daily, much less ones that we only use yearly. I hope this post will clear many of your Christmas grammar issues up!

(Want to learn more grammar and usage from Language Lady? Check out these links:

• My new Tricky Tricks to Help It Stick Page
• All of our amazing Punctuation Puzzles
• The Write Right Quick Kit
• Preposition Practice Pack
• Think Fast Grammar Quiz)

This time of year we see a plethora of spelling, capitalization, grammar, and usage errors–on signs, catalogs, greeting cards, and more:

1. merry Christmas on a greeting card (which technically isn’t wrong, but just doesn’t look right either!)

2. “This line is for eight items or less”–even though it should be “eight items or fewer”

3. Xmas–even though the Associated Press itself says to never use this abbreviation!

4. Seasons’ Greetings (which indicates that you are offering someone greetings for more than one season–the plural noun seasons)

5. Happy capitalization guy or girl–Christmas Tree, Christmas Decorations, Christmas Ham, etc.

Many holiday greetings and terms are subjective (shocking, huh?); however, here is a list to help you see the most common ways that greetings and holiday words are expressed this time of year:

1. You can write any of the following:

a. Seasons Greetings (no possession shown at all–more of a noun describing another noun)

b. seasons greetings (same as a., but no capitalization–not recommended for greeting cards and headers)

c. Season’s Greetings (the most common way, showing that the season {one season} possesses the greeting; note the capping here)

d. season’s greetings (like c but not capped)

2. Of course, people also write Merry Christmas in different combinations (with and without the M capitalized; however, Christmas should always be capitalized because it is a proper noun by itself:

a. merry Christmas

b. Merry Christmas

3. To cap or not to cap greetings? This is a stylistic preference, but if it is in a header or greeting card, you definitely want to capitalize:

a. Season’s Greetings or season’s greetings

b. Merry Christmas or merry Christmas

c. Happy Holidays or happy holidays

d. Happy New Year or happy New Year

e. Happy Christmas or happy Christmas

f. Happy Christmastime (all one word) or happy Christmastime (again, all one word)

4. Words that are already proper nouns should remain proper nouns in every context and should retain their capitalization:

a. Santa Claus

b. Poinsettia–This is traditionally capitalized because the flower is named after a botanist and physician who was also the first US Ambassador to Mexico, Joel Roberts Poinsett. In 1828, he introduced the plant to the country.

c. The actual holidays

i. Christmas or Christmas Day
ii. Christmas Eve
iii. New Year’s Eve (one year–singular YEAR…..hmm….”that doesn’t end in an s, so I need to put apostrophe s”)
iv. New Year’s Day

d. North Pole (Remember–you capitalize directions when they are part of a proper noun already–but not when giving directions. No “Turn West at the corner”!)

e. Jesus, Jesus Christ, Messiah–most Christian publications capitalize names for or references to God and Jesus

f. All locations associated with Christ’s birth and life as they are proper nouns already–Bethlehem, Nazareth, etc., and, of course, King Herod, Joseph, and Mary (but not shepherds or wise men)

g. When describing decorations, only capitalize the original proper noun:

i. Christmas tree
ii. Christmas wreath
iii. New Year’s Day dinner
iv. Christmas Eve party

h. Nativity is capitalized when it stands alone or when it is combined with non-proper noun elements

i. Nativity scene
ii. Nativity pieces
iii. Nativity story

i. Advent is capitalized in all contexts

Merry Christmas from the Language Lady!

The post Fix Those Christmas Grammar and Usage Errors! appeared first on Character Ink.

In my last blog post, I talked about how to determine which traditions to keep for everybody and which traditions will likely go by the wayside. These are obviously very personal decisions – and you will probably want to discuss these with your older children.

There are some other traditions that we have kept in part. These traditions are ones that we still do with our at-home kids, but we invite the olders to as well.

The key to having traditions that you want to include everybody for but that you do not want to obligate them to is to use the phrasing that my husband uses all the time in dealing with our older children:

This is an invitation, not an obligation!

This is not only a Christmas tip, but if you have older kids, especially if they are married, you want them to feel included, but at the same time it is unwise to put pressure on them to do and be everything – especially when it comes to extended family. If our older children went to every single event that the grandparents and the grandparents’ siblings have, Memorial Day parties, Christmas get-togethers, etc., they would not have enough time for their own families.

The same thing is true with things that we continued on at Christmas time with our tweens and teens as the older siblings went to college and/or got married. We want to make the adults feel included, but we do not want to infringe on their own family life.

So for some of our Christmas festivities, those that they and we have determined together will not necessarily always include everybody, we remind them that this is an “invitation, not obligation.”

We say this often, and we want them to know that we mean it. We want them to put their own families first. We want them to put their spouse before their siblings. We want them to put their home about their parents. This wording gives them the freedom to do so – and remind them continually that we place a high importance upon their adult lives.

See this post where I describe our “in-laws-first Christmas”—and why I recommend having this!

P.S. Don’t forget to check out the podcast episode about Christmas With College and Adult Kids!

The post Christmas With College & Adult Children: Invitation vs. Obligation appeared first on Character Ink.

One of the things that was difficult for me in having college and adult kids with Christmas was not being able to continue all of the traditions that we had formally done. I mentioned earlier that through homeschooling, we actually spent a lot of time on Christmas. Our entire December was centered around Christmas readings, unit studies, Christmas baking and cooking, and more.

As our oldest child was married and in the next two girls were in college, they were home less and less. At first, I continued the traditions during the daytime with my kids were still homeschooling. But what was I going to do about the evening and weekend traditions?

One of the things that I had to decide early on was which traditions were important enough to try to include everybody and which traditions were not. When our son was first married, we decorated for Christmas without him – four months after his wedding. Imagine my surprise when he came into the house, to all the Christmas decorations and the tree, and was nearly teary-eyed. “You decorated without us?” I was heartbroken! Here I had been trying not to impose upon him and his new wife, and I left him out of something that was very important to him. A couple of years later, our oldest daughter, our second child, was in Texas in college. The kids went together and flew her home for two days just so that she would not miss decorating.

So I learned early on that decorating for Christmas was one tradition that the kids would want to keep even as adults. Yes, this was something to keep for the entire family.

So one thing I recommend with older children is to decide with the kids what things are important enough to save for when they’re home from college and for the local adult kids, and which things would just be for the at-home kids.

This will obviously be based on trial and error like ours above as well as on what you have just found are most memorable to your kids.

Here are some traditions that we keep with our college and adult kids in part or in whole:

1. Christmas decorating night – this is a party night for our family, and nobody wants to miss it. We have purposely moved this to be Thanksgiving weekend when the college kids are home. We have continued with our appetizer party, Nativity setting up (dozens of nativities of various sizes), drawing of names for the sibling exchange (a new tradition–see future post), putting up the tree and decorating with our homemade ornaments that we made in our unit studies throughout the years, reading Christmas stories, singing carols, and just being together.

2. Our own Christmas eve – we always had a protocol of a party on Christmas eve with a few presents and lots of games followed by our traditional Christmas day. Even though once our children began getting married, I gave Christmas eve and Christmas day to my children-in-laws’ families (see future post!), everybody still wanted a Christmas eve and Christmas day at home. Thus, our own Christmas eve – filled with games, fun exchanges, appetizers, stories, songs, and staying up half of the night – continued on but just on a different day other than Christmas eve. It is not uncommon at all for us to have our “Christmas eve” on December 27, 28, or 29. It doesn’t matter to any of us, just so we have a Christmas eve.

3. Our own Christmas day – even when our kids were little, we did the grandparent thing whenever that was held, but had our own Christmas day – regardless of whether that was on the 25th. What I mean by that is that if we had a lot to do on the 25th with extended family, we made the 26th or the 27th our Christmas day. This was something that the older kids wanted to continue, and we do so today. So we have our Christmas eve whenever we can find an open evening and has the next day free – and the next day is our Christmas day. The Christmas story, exchanging gifts, playing games, taking naps, and having a Christmas dinner are all still the things that we do on our very own “Christmas day” with all seven of our children and any spouses (and now a grandbaby!).

There are other things that we intersperse here and there, like our “White Christmas night,” which I talk about in another post. We also about every other year do a big family Christmas outing, just like we used to do when the kids were little – for anybody who is available. This usually involves a local play or the Star of Bethlehem planetarium show, etc. While everybody is not available for these, we do try to open these to anybody who can come.

Stay with us as we talk about “invitation vs. obligation” in a few days!

P.S. Listen to the podcast episode,”Christmas With College and Adult Children,” in which I give all of the upcoming posts orally with a succinct handout for you! 🙂

The post Christmas With College & Adult Children: Continuing Earlier Traditions appeared first on Character Ink.

One of the ways that we make our Christmas Eve super special is through special gifts and games (besides the traditions from long ago of singing carols, reading Christmas stories, and having the sibling gift exchange). Our Christmas Eve is a full evening of food, fun, fellowship, worship, reflecting, reminiscing, and play!

In the past few years as our family has grown, we could no longer fit around the table for Uno, Kemps, or Pit, so Ray did some research on group games and discovered something called “Minute to Win It” (we have been without television for years…and only in the past few with Netflix and Hulu do we know what’s out there! LOL). Anyway, he found things online, our daughter found some things for him on Pinterest, and he was off with new Christmas Eve traditions—Minute to Win It games.

For these games, we break up into teams and do relay style or “cooperative” types of games—completing puzzles, putting playing cards in a certain order, rubberband relay races, ping pong ball tosses, etc. It is crazy fun, and everybody has a great time with them.

Here are some pictures along with some descriptions of some of our favorite Christmas Eve games!

Teams of three assembling puzzles right side up then upside down!

Teams of three making a structure out of cups and plates.

Teams of three picking up M and M’s with chop sticks!

Flipping ping pong balls to the other side of the table with rubber bands.

More Minute to Win It games!

Late night card games when the group dwindles as people go to bed!

The post Christmas With College and Adult Children: Our Christmas Eve Games appeared first on Character Ink.

Christmas is a time of spreading good cheer. It is a time of giving gifts. It is a time that we remember the best gift ever given to the earth. And yet it quickly becomes a time of selfishness when it comes to get-togethers, “getting” Christmas Eve or Christmas day for your get together when your kids are grown, etc.

Maybe this was easier for me because when our kids were little, we decided that we would not have a Christmas day that was filled with running around to multiple grandparents, especially with divorced ones making another place to go. Thus, if we had an extended family get together on the 25th, our Christmas day was simply a different day. It was easy, and our children came to realize that if they did not wake up to open presents on the actual December 25th, that was fine. Christmas was just longer and even more fun!

Regardless of the reason for the ease of it, when our first child married eleven years ago, I knew that I didn’t want the traditional “part of the day here and part of the day there.” Joshua married a gal who was the only girl in a family of three children. I knew from the beginning that I did not want to request Christmas Eve or Christmas day as one of our get together days simply because I did not want to ask my new daughter-in-law, the only girl in her family, to give up time with her family in order to have our Christmas. I also didn’t think it sounded very fun to have an hour or two or three here or there, with kids coming and going and no real family unity.

Thus, when Joshua and Lisa got married, I told Joshua up front that her family could have Christmas day and potentially even Christmas Eve if desired. We would simply have our Christmas celebrations at a different time/different date. (During part of this time, my dad had Christmas Eve—and my kids tried to make it to that whenever possible.)

As I mentioned earlier in the blog post about continuing with traditions, my kids did not want a couple of hours with siblings just dropping in. They wanted a day together – and even the evening before. Thus, our Christmas Eve and Christmas day have been as early as the 21st and 22nd of December and as late as the 29th and 30th. It doesn’t matter to us.

Fast forward eleven years, and two of our kids were married last year. One of them, our second son, married a young lady whose mother died suddenly of an aneurism nearly six years ago. I have been even more grateful for the tradition of “the in-laws-first-Christmas” I’m happy that my son and daughter-in-law, she the firstborn in a family of four children, do not have to choose between coming to our house or spending the day with her father and siblings.

Our third daughter was married last year, and her husband’s family lives in South Carolina. I am equally happy that we have chosen this route for them as his parents do not get to see them as much as we do. I am thrilled that they will get to spend several days with his parents and get to have Christmas Eve and Christmas day with his family.

In a season of goodwill among men and selflessness, is it too much to ask not to have things our own way? Is it too much to ask we would put the new members of our family – our daughters-in-law and sons-in-law – before our own wants and desires?

I know this wouldn’t work for everybody as not everyone would be in town on the right dates, etc., to “do Christmas” a different date. But if nothing else, I hope this post leaves you with the thought of really considering your grown kids and their new families when making your holiday plans. And helping them to focus on their own new family. And spreading goodwill to all! 🙂

P.S. Listen to the podcast episode about Christmas With College and Adult Kids!

The post Christmas With College & Adult Children: The In-Laws-First Christmas appeared first on Character Ink.

One of the things that I love about our adult children having such close relationships is when they ask for group gifts (still!).

It is not uncommon for them to ask for things like these:

1. Restaurant gift cards to a place that they all want to go to together but that the college kids couldn’t afford without a gift card.

2. A video series that they will pass around/share with one another

3. A football that is kept at Mom and Dad’s for them all to use when they are all here together

4. Movie theater tickets for them all to go see a movie together

5. A game that they only play all together that is too expensive for one person to buy

Group gifts are just another way to keep kids close to each other–and even bring them back home together at times! 🙂

My Axis and Allies kids with their new 1914 edition…once a homeschooler, always a homeschooler!

The post Christmas With College and Adult Kids: Group Gifts appeared first on Character Ink.

Christmas with college and adult kids can easily turn into a fiasco if family members are not careful to put other people first. Selflessness is the key to family harmony at all ages—but especially with college and adult kids simply because when someone has a bad attitude or is selfish, parents really have no recourse with grown kids. (It’s not like you’re going to send a twenty-four year old to his room!)

My advice for this is not going to be the most helpful for families with grown kids THIS Christmas. But families with younger children really need to grasp the idea that whatever is happening in your home among siblings now is likely not going to magically go away when they are adults.

Of course, little spats and disagreements do not linger, but, quite frankly, selfish children become selfish adults. Kids who do not learn how to defer to siblings, parents, grandparents, and others will not just miraculously defer to those people when they are grown. So my advice to have family unity in Christmas futures: focus on character training—selflessness, deference, and more—while your children are young. Initiate traditions that teach kids to give to others. Don’t let your kids be mean to each other!

Stories and Songs on Christmas Eve

So for those with kids coming home from college or grown kids coming over for Christmas, here are some suggestions for building family unity at Christmas time:

1) Continue with past traditions that bind your family together—that special Christmas Eve story, the special cornbread stuffing, the Oreo dessert in the “blue bowl.” While some of these things might seem small, they make our families unique and give even our grown kids a sense of belonging. (See Continue Earlier Traditions and Other Traditions With All or Part of the Family.)

2) Consider having a sibling gift exchange—Once our second child got married, it was starting to get expensive for the kids to buy for every sibling and sibling-in-law, so the kids decided to draw names and just get one “medium” sized gift for the person each one drew. I thought this would detract from our family closeness, but just the opposite has happened: they sneak, surprise, trick, etc., to try to keep the person from knowing they have that sibling (or sibling-in-law). They go to great lengths to get something that is special to that person. This has made our Christmas Eve even richer.

The Family voting on the number of presents that Mom lost or will give to the wrong person this Christmas!

3) Consider getting group gifts—gift cards for the kids to do something all together after Christmas, a shared gift that can be passed from house to house, etc. (See Group Gifts post.)

4) Make kids’ favorite foods—Everybody in our family knows that Jonathan adores snickerdoodles, Kara loves Rice Krispie treats, and Lisa (our daughter-in-law) despises bananas. Find out everybody’s favorites and buy or have these. (See our free Kids’ Faves worksheet to find out what makes your kids tick!)

5) Reminisce—Our family loves to talk about Christmases past—“Remember when Mom shocked everybody by getting Josiah his first drum set?” or “Remember when Mom threw the cinnamon sticks across the room when we were making that cinnamon stick ornament?” or “Remember when Mom and Dad took us to that Christmas opera on accident and we sang everything we said the entire way home?” The kids love to talk about how many Christmas gifts I lose, give to the wrong person, etc. (See their voting picture below!) Sharing memories increases family unity!

Our High School and College Kids!

6) Do some things that you have always done—while we don’t read a half dozen Christmas stories or sing a dozen carols on Christmas Eve—we still do at least one of our favorite old stories (check out several of the stories that I will be sharing throughout the month—they are online for free!) and a couple of songs. It is hard to keep a lot of people’s attention (and not all kids-in-law are used to a two hour story and song Christmas Eve!), but even a portion of what we used to do binds our hearts together.

7) Play group games—Group games can definitely be challenging with fourteen adults, but we work hard at making sure our Christmas times with our grown kids are very special—even if it means working ahead of time to get games and activities ready for a fun-filled time together. (See Christmas Eve Games for some ideas.)

8) Make new kids (kids-in-love!) feel like a part of your family. Talk to the personally about the upcoming gatherings (as opposed to just talking to your own son or daughter). Find out what they love—and bless them with it. (See Mistletoe and Chap Stick post.)

The post Christmas With College and Adult Kids: Family Unity at Christmas appeared first on Character Ink.

My husband loves to do clever things all the time—pranks on the kids, jokes, etc. He also likes to do special things for the kids—and let them know that he was thinking of them. (Not just that Mom thought of a special thing and had him “sign on” for it!) I love this about him, and it makes our kids feel so well-parented by BOTH parents.

Last Christmas—with one wedding behind us by four months and another one coming in a month or so—Ray thought it would be fun to get the three married and one soon-to-be-married sons and sons-in-law mistletoe and chap stick for early Christmas presents. He was very adamant that he didn’t want to give it to them on our Christmas gathering because he wanted them to “use” them the whole month of December.

So…I indulged him and found a great deal on some beautiful fake mistletoe at Kohl’s, and he picked up the chap stick at Walmart, and we set out to bag them/wrap them (and mail them to two of the guys). He signed the card from himself and was quite pleased with his little “prank.”

The kids sent him pictures of them standing beneath it kissing, holding it over their lover’s head, hanging it in their doorway, etc. And it was a fun Christmas gift for all.

As an aside, one of the best ways that you can make your children-in-law feel like a part of your family is to include them right from the start in your Christmas traditions. When our first child was married, the new “Reish” got the same amount spent on her, the same attention, and the same Christmas gifts that everybody else. (According to one of my boys, the daughters-in-law get more than they do! LOL)

But not only gifts—even this little “prank gift,” or picking up their favorite white chocolate (daughter-in-law) or dark chocolate (son-in-law) or texting them specific plans (as opposed to just sending the info to your child) can go a long way in making them feel a part of your family’s Christmas celebrations.

Finding out what your children-in-law like is a great way to make them feel like a part of your Christmas festivities. Here are our two daughters-in-law with their special gifts from us–one collects penguins and the other snowmen!

P.S. Print off our free “Kids’ Faves” sheets and give to your children-in-law to fill out to find out what makes them tick!

The post Christmas With College and Adult Children: Mistletoe and Chap Stick appeared first on Character Ink.

I have talked at length about our Christmas Eve celebrations, games, food, and tradition. One newer tradition that we began a few years ago with all of our olders (who are now all olders!) is the Pass and “Steal” Grab Bags.

A lot of groups do this activity in which you bring a gift of a certain type or price range (all gift cards or white elephant or all food gifts or all ornaments or all games or all movies, etc.) then you draw numbers. The person with number one goes first and chooses a gift and opens it. The person with number two may choose another gift or “steal” the first person’s gift. When a person’s gift is stolen, he may steal someone else’s gift or choose an unwrapped one. The game continues like this until everybody has gone and there are no gifts remaining. There is usually some kind of rule to keep the game from going on forever, such as that a gift may only be “stolen” twice or three times (depending on the number of people playing) and then it is “dead,” meaning that the person who has it on the last steal keeps it (it may not be stolen again).

Several years ago we decided to do this with our kids on Christmas Eve with common things that a lot of them like or would like to have. They always have the option of stealing if they don’t particularly want what they opened. And in the end, they often trade anyway (“I’ll give you my Starbucks gift card for your McDonald’s”), so it all shakes out in the end.

This game has been especially fun as I have put in some special things—a stack of Christmas picture books that I collected from Goodwill and garage sales that we always read aloud when the kids were little or a complete set of some books that we had when the kids were growing up (all of the Josh Ladd chapter books), etc. These got stolen often, and it was fun to see how much these things meant to the kids.

Joshua, our oldest, about to “steal” a stack of Christmas picture books that we read aloud every year for Christmas!

For us, these grab bags are part of their “Christmas,” meaning we use some of the kids’ gift money for these presents, so they have some pretty cool things in them, such as books, videos, games, car charger, inverter, Bath and Body Works set (this is fun if a guy gets it and ends up giving it to one of his sisters!), and lots of gift cards to restaurants and favorite stores, as well as car wash cards and more.

Again, we do this on our Christmas Eve, before or after the sibling gift exchange and Plastic Wrap Prizes Ball (but after our stories and songs), and it adds a lot of excitement to our Christmas Eve as well as mystery as the kids try to guess what might be in a bag by its weight, etc. Just more family fun on Christmas Eve!

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