This Christmas was certainly very new and different for our family, but in the midst of all the change, we made sure to keep many of our favorite family traditions the same for our girls (and for us!). Luke found a great place in Rīga to buy a nice Christmas tree. Maybe next year we will go to the forest and cut one down (every Latvian family is entitled to one free Christmas tree), but this year we took the easy way! We were extremely grateful for our brand new (to us) car with which we were able to transport it. Even though we didn’t have any of our own Christmas ornaments this year (they are all still in the shipping process), the girls had a lot of fun decorating the tree with lights, burlap ribbon, popcorn/cranberry strings, and a few ornaments we’ve acquired already in Latvia.
We also made Great-Grandma Burgin’s traditional sugar cookies! We enjoyed having some of our Latvian friends over to help decorate them. Gingerbread cookies are very popular here, but our friends had never had white iced sugar cookies!
Our main goal as a family during the season of advent is to orient our hearts and the hearts of our children toward the good news of great joy that was the birth of our Savior. We were able to do that in several ways this year, through our advent wreath devotions, attending a Christmas Eve service at a church in Rīga, and opening a figurine of baby Jesus as our first gift on Christmas morning as we read Luke chapter 2.
And, just because they’re cute, I’ll leave you with a picture of our girls in their new jammies on Christmas Eve! We are so thankful for the blessing of Christmas and the Savior that we celebrate!
