5 Ways to Remember a Deceased Loved One at Christmas

It is often painful to remember a deceased loved one at Christmas. I’ve lost my mother and my grandparents over the last decade.

Holidays are always hard for our family. We are reconciling the joy of the season with the grief that inevitably fills our hearts each year.

I never want my loved ones to be forgotten, especially by my young daughters.

We display our missing loved ones’ photos and belongings — my mother’s artwork and family heirloom furniture and my grandfather’s saddle and spurs — in our home. We talk about Grandma Dixie, Great Grandpa, and Great Grandma fondly and frequently. At Christmastime, I like to add a few special touches to aid our remembrance of them.

5 Ways to Remember a Deceased Loved One at Christmas

Here are a few simple ways to remember your deceased loved one at Christmas this year:

Hang their stocking or holiday decorations.

I display my mother’s Santa Claus and reindeer decorations so that every time we pass by them, we think of her.

I also hang my mother’s childhood stocking that was handmade by her grandmother on her china cabinet in my living room. It serves as a visible reminder of her love for gift giving on Christmas morning.

Choose a special ornament for your tree.

The year she died, I picked out an ornament to hang on our tree each year in memory of my mom. Finding it in the ornament box each year is a new favorite tradition.

Make their favorite holiday recipes.

One of my favorite ways to remember my mom is to pull out her and her grandmothers’ old cookbooks and recreate their recipes.

For Christmas, I like to make one of her favorites, like sausage cheese biscuits, pinwheels or ranger cookies. And I always drink spiced, hot apple cider and think of her in this season.

Donate to their favorite nonprofit.

A sweet way to honor a loved one’s memory is to make a donation to a favorite charity.

At Christmastime, I like to honor their memory by making a donation to a nonprofit that helps provide housing, food, clothing and/or Christmas gifts to people who may otherwise not receive them this winter.

Continue their favorite holiday traditions.

My mom’s favorite Christmas traditions were serving and eating a fancy, slightly Southern Christmas Eve dinner, driving around to look at Christmas lights and then returning home to exchange family presents. Christmas morning was reserved for stockings and Santa gifts, of course.

While we don’t precisely follow this plan each year (Christmas Eve dinner has evolved into Texas tamales), we try to incorporate traditions my mother loved into our celebrations as a way of keeping her memory alive.

A version of this post was originally published at The Mighty December 14, 2017.