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Home for the Holidays

Celebrating Christmas With Your Newly Adopted Child

By Heather V. Long

Part of parenting involves building positive strengths and self-confidence in our children. Learning with them and developing new rituals, as well as incorporating the old, helps to do just that. Adopted children need the influences and reminders of the past to help them define who they are and will be.

In the Ukraine, there is a Christmas spider web legend that tells of one family in a village who was too poor to have a decorated Christmas tree in their house. The mother hung a few meager nuts and fruits on the small tree outside their door in hopes of bringing some cheer to her children's Christmas Day celebration. On Christmas Eve, the spiders heard her prayers and hung their webs all over the tree. As the sun came up, its rays glittered and sparkled on the dew that was sprinkled on the webs and turned them to silver and gold.

"We will tell them this story and attempt to make ornaments that look something like it," says Glidden. "We strongly believe that all members of a family are contributors. Therefore, we gladly adopt what our children's heritage brings. Even if it is new to them now, one day they will know that we have accepted their heritage as well as they have adopted ours. As the boys often say: 'We all got married.'"

A family is not built on the biological or cultural similarities they share, but the traditions and memories they create to treasure in the years to come.

Want to see more?

• Holiday Beginnings: New Traditions for the Families of Today
• The Art of Christmas Caroling
• Hanukkah: A History of Tradition
• Holiday Headquarters
• Talk about it!