Life on a dairy farm around the holidays provides the opportunity to live decades-old traditions and the opportunity to create new ones. With social media today, it’s easy to compare the simplicity of Christmas on the farm to the bustle of Christmas in the city. It’s also easy to get so caught up in the craziness of winter on the farm that we forget to savor the moment.
Some families take a hayride to the trees growing in the pasture to cut a Christmas tree grown on the farmstead, while others drag a fake tree out of storage in the basement. Every family has their preference when it comes to white or colored lights. The ornaments might be cows, horses, barns and some other resemblance of farm life. In our house, you will find a tree decorated with ornaments from places we have traveled to and homemade ornaments from when the kids were little. A second tree can be found in the meeting room in the barn. This tree is decorated with a collection of cow ornaments that grows every year.
Take a drive around the countryside, and farms have some of the best light displays. During the Christmas season of 2020, I wanted people from a distance to feel a sense of hope when driving up. Together with my boys, we built a 10-foot star wrapped in white lights and set it up outside our barn. It can be seen from over a mile away and has become a must in our outside Christmas lights. Numerous silos are topped with stars and trees wrapped with lights as the normal dark countryside glows with the Christmas spirit.
Any farm kid knows that reindeer like to eat hay and carrots like cows. With the help of Mom and Dad, a bale of hay might just be put in front of the barn or house to provide an evening snack when Santa, Rudolph and the other reindeer stop by. When my kids were younger and into the magic of the season, we would put hay out along with the magic reindeer food they brought home from school. In the snow on Christmas morning there was hay chaff with Santa’s boot prints nearby.
Around the holiday season, a common meme seen on social media says you know you are a farm kid when you must wait until chores are done to open presents. Many farm kids hurry through those Christmas morning chores to see what Santa left in their stockings. In the process of early morning chores on a frosty morning, we might be graced with the blessing of a Christmas calf. Almost every farm has at least one cow with a Christmas-themed name whose birthday is around the joyous season. Noel and Feliz are a couple names we have used on our farm.
Christmas isn’t always easy on a farm, as the volatile markets might make finances tight when it comes time to purchase that perfect gift. The gifts wrapped under the tree might be some of the best homemade gifts made in the shop or barn with lots of love. One year, we went to a local company that builds prefabricated homes. They put their scrap wood out for people to take. We filled a truck, piled it on a pallet in the calf barn, purchased some nails and gave the kids hammers. When they went out to the barn on Christmas morning, they found this pallet full of all different sizes and shapes of various types of wood to build with. They put their creative minds to use and were able to keep busy for days. The crafty side of me comes out during the holiday season. Using scrap wood, I often create homemade gifts for family and friends. Some years it was Christmas trees, other years it was a snowman or even a holiday sign.
Make sure you pause for a moment this holiday season to share in the age-old traditions, make some new ones and soak in the moment.
