Our Family Tradition

In December of 1990, my first date with my husband occurred. It ended up being dinner alone and then we met up with a group of friends and journeyed about sixty miles up the highway to a little town called Crawfordville, Georgia. There is not much to the town, but a family who owned some acreage had begun a Christmas tradition of filling the woods with lots of lighted displays, vignettes of homemade scenes, a huge marshmallow fire, hot chocolate and just a complete evening of fun. The following year after we were married, we made the trek to Crawfordville a Christmas tradition.

Ten years or so ago, someone decided to end all of our fun by vandalizing the site and displays and essentially ending a tradition for not just my family, buy possible thousands of others.

Four years ago, about a mile from my house, another family, using acres of previously wooded land, opened Lights of the South. Danny and I were thrilled to be able to enjoy this tradition once again, and especially to share it with our girl. It is a great family friendly place, a hayride through the woods amongst beautiful lighted displays and other wonders, hot chocolate, marshmellows for roasting and Santa's house. Yes, that is right, Santa Claus lives right down the road from us! We went the first weekend this place opened, four years ago and we have gone back ever since. We love it. Each year it gets bigger and better and this year was no different.

We picked a weeknight, hoping to avoid the crowds and sure enough - we picked correctly. No crowds, even on the hayride it was just us and one other family. After a thrilling, but COLD ride through the woods, we stopped at Santa's house and were the only people there! Hannah got to spend an extraordinary visit with THE MAN himself, she gave him a big hug, got some winks in and sat on his lap for pictures. We had a grand time visiting with Mr. and Mrs. Claus, truly a night to remember. Afterwards we had hot chocolate and roasted some marshmellows for S'Mores!

It was a great evening. We were home by 7:30, just in time to revel in another one of our family traditions - watching A Christmas Story on television. I guess it is officially the Christmas season in our home, we have decorations, we have seen Santa and we have watched Ralphie (almost!) shoot his eye out.

Gotta love those family traditions. What is your favorite family Christmas tradition?

Living Happily In the Moment!

Beverly