Thinking about Celebrating.

Seriously – it’s the end of February already!
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and planning and scheming as of late about celebrating with our family. It’s almost Ayyam-i-ha time which is a 4 day long Baha’i celebration. The great thing about being a Baha’i (ok, not the only great thing) is that we don’t have so many traditions. Sometimes this is a pain in the butt because we don’t have a way already figured out to celebrate things, but this leaves us the freedom to make the celebration what we want. I’ve been trying to figure out how to do this for a while now. I grew up in a Baha’i family and we were pretty haphazard about celebrating. We tried various things from decorating mom’s jade tree to odd stealing gift exchanges.
Now that I’m the matriarch of my own little family (haha) I’m yearning to create some great memories for my family. Here is the product of my brainstorm this year:

4 types of things we’ll do:
Decorate
Celebrate
Community
Family

goals:
anticipate
flexible
fun
creative/ thoughtful
tradition
fresh

not:
consumerism
Christmas (my pet peeve – this is not Baha’i Christmas. Plus we also celebrate Christmas with other family, so it’s a big deal for me that this is distinct from Christmas.)
fussy
difficult
burden/obligation

Ayyam-i-ha is 4 days – why not take advantage of that?
4 Things:
1. fun activity
2. gift
3. service project
4. ?

I found 4 sturdy boxes with lids to decorate - they’ll contain something special for each day – a gift, a clue for a scavenger hunt or where to find something that wouldn’t fit in the boxes, materials to do some activity etc.

So, this year our 4 things are:
1. for A. – craft materials.
2. for A. - letters stamps.
3. community party at our house. this is our service project this year.
4. family trip to a nearby provincial park.

I don’t know why but the gifts are just for the kids so far. This only seems unfair when I think about it too much. I don’t have any gifts for the baby yet because I can’t figure out what to get her – another toy? I wanted to make some new booties for her but I ran out of time.