This is our first Christmas together as a married couple, as our own family unit.

For the last few years of celebrating Christmas together, we’ve each been joining in the other’s family traditions. Whether it’s cookie baking, the way we do gift exchanges, or just where and when we gather with everyone to spend time together.

The his and hers of it all has become ours.

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Still, it’s also nice to have a tradition or a special experience that is uniquely our own.  Something special that starts with us, that we might be able to pass on to our own children someday.

Things like this, however, can’t be forced or over-planned. The best family traditions are the ones that come from the heart and that the heart keeps going year after year.

Well, our first new tradition came to us the other night. Sometimes we (and our friends) joke around about all of our books. We know of libraries and other people have used books to build a Christmas tree, so why not us?

We certainly had enough books on hand to give it a go.

Putting the tree together was more of a project, at first, than anything else. It was more of a “let’s see how this works” kind of thing.

But when it was finished, we both loved it.

We both knew, in our hearts, that this was something we want to do together every year. Every year the tree will probably look a little different; we will most likely use different books to make it, build it in different locations, decorate it differently.

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So really, it’s that feeling in our hearts, the one we both felt when we stepped back together to look at the completed tree, that feeling is what will be the same. And it will be our own special tradition.

~Melissa