Collected Traditions: Bridgetown Baby Doulas’ Holiday Celebrations

As a doula team, we pride ourselves on a unified approach to our work with families - we also recognize and celebrate the diverse perspectives and experiences each of our members brings to the team. Our team’s varied holiday celebrations offer a fun window into that diversity - read on for warm smiles and sweet celebrations.

Katie

Postpartum Doula

When our oldest son was attending a Waldorf school, we picked up a Steiner approach to the advent wreath. Each week, we focus on a different theme: Stone, Plants, Animals, and Humankind. Every Sunday in December leading up to Christmas, we light a new candle, and add elements from nature to our advent wreath. On Christmas Eve, we take the whole thing apart, and then ceremoniously put it back together in a candle lighting ceremony. We invite our guests to bring items related to those themes, and as we light each candle guests add items to our little winter altar. In our family, the fifth candle, the center candle, represents hope and the returning of the light after the solstice. I grew up in a very religious Christian household, but as an adult hold different beliefs than traditional Christianity. This approach to the advent wreath has helped me anchor the winter holidays in a way that makes sense to me.

Merriah ~ Postpartum Doula and Lactation Consultant; Bridgetown Baby Founder

We celebrate Hanukkah and Christmas. Since we live in Christmas tree country, we love to cut down our own tree with my dad, Grandpa Dave.

Erica ~ Postpartum Doula

Every Christmas Eve We have an early dinner with our family and attend mass. My mom joins us and afterwards we come home and each kiddo gets to open one present. We of course know what that present is (pajamas, always pajamas!) and as they have all gotten older they have caught on too! Traditions are important to me because as I grow older it’s what I remember, what I hold close to my heart. My family is the most important and creating memories and traditions with them is what it’s all about.

Krystle ~ Postpartum Doula

Each year we like to incorporate  different traditions into our holiday festivities. Since the season is about the light returning to the dark and helping others, we celebrate with lights, fires, and friends. And since we have three younger children, we always do some Christmas lights, cut down and decorate our own tree and do traditional Santa Clause on Christmas Eve.  We also celebrate St. Nicholas day on December 6th and the 12 days of Yule. And this year we will be celebrating Chanukah as well, since we now have family who are Jewish!

Camilla ~ Postpartum Doula

For Hanukkah, my family has always opened one gift a night. There is always a theme to the nights, with many of them being inexpensive tokens of love, learning, and togetherness. We gift socks, books, an experience together, favorite memories, something handmade, something silly, some article of clothing (aside from socks), and on the final day something big and special.

For Solstice, we take 24 hours off of technology. We reconnect as a family hang out around the fire, reading books, playing board games, and spending time in nature. This year we will be doing an exercise of acknowledgement of all that we have accomplished over the last year as a family, as individuals, and as community members, by writing down those accomplishments, burning those papers, and writing on new papers what we hope to continue accomplishing. In this way, we can be reminded that there is still momentum in all that we engage in.

Sarah ~ Lactation Consultant

Our favorite tradition is that we store all our favorite holiday books with our decorations, then bring them out when we decorate our tree. We put them all under the tree while we are waiting for gifts to arrive. We started this tradition when we had toddlers and learned that if we left a gift out, it would be opened immediately. Now that they're teenagers, it is so fun to read all those books and remember what we were all like the last time we read them a year ago!

Katelynn ~ Sibling Support Doula

My favorite holiday tradition has to be sleeping around the tree Christmas Eve with my brothers and sisters. It was our biggest sibling “sleepover” of the year. Every Christmas Eve we would go to church, come home to watch a holiday movie, and then we would all fall asleep in the living room under the tree lights. We would wake up to presents and cinnamon rolls and it was magic every time. The dynamic of this tradition has changed some as we’ve grown and gotten married, but those memories of the love and excitement I have with my family will be treasured forever.

Vera ~ Postpartum Doula

One of my favorite ways to celebrate during the holidays is crafting and baking! I love making ornaments, baking cookies to share, making beautiful tablescapes out of seasonal flora, and indulging in vegan-nog around a fire with good friends. Creating beautiful and delicious things is a way that I express gratitude for abundance!