Alyssa Thomas PHX Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like A.T. shirt

Alyssa Thomas PHX Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like A.T. shirt

For us, it is Christmas Eve. There are just two of Alyssa Thomas PHX Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like A.T. shirt, as we have no children. When we were first married, we always went to my parents’ house on Christmas Day. All of us (my parents, me, my husband, brothers, SIL, nieces, nephew) would open our gifts and then have a Christmas dinner. My husband and I started a tradition of having a Christmas Eve dinner together, just the two of us, and exchanging our gifts to each other after dinner. After a couple of years, we switched from a Baptist church to a Methodist church that has a Christmas Eve service (the Baptist church never had a service on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day unless one of those days happened to be Sunday). The pattern for Christmas Eve then became church, dinner, gifts (and, for some years, a second late evening church service). Meanwhile, my mother finally had to admit pulling off a Christmas dinner was too much, and we went to finger foods or sandwiches. Then she decided that getting everything wrapped and ready by the 25th was too hard, and my brother and his family kept arriving later and later every year because they would spend the afternoon at her mother’s house 120 miles away, so the family Christmas get-together got moved to the Saturday after Christmas, then to the Saturday after New Year’s, then to the second Saturday in January. Christmas Day itself became a non-event. We still keep our tradition of having our dinner and gift exchange on Christmas Eve, and of course, the church service is still that evening as well. Christmas Day is now just a nice day off from work to relax.

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Alyssa Thomas PHX Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like A.T. shirt hoodie, tank top, sweater and long sleeve t-shirt

Many of the Alyssa Thomas PHX Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like A.T. shirt Christmas customs were inherited from older Winter Solstice celebrations—including greenery indoors, feasting and gift-giving. It seems quite likely that the celebration of the birth of Jesus was scheduled at that time in order to piggy-back on existing holiday observances. Halloween is very directly descended from the old Celtic feast of Samhain, when the dead return to visit the living. Modern Pagans observe this and Beltane (May Day) as their major holidays, the Feast of the Dead and the Feast of the Living on opposite sides of the Wheel of the Year. Easter’s Pagan connections are suggested by its English name, Eostara being a Pagan Germanic Goddess associated with the Spring Equinox. The bunnies and eggs probably go back to Pagan times as well.

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