I'm not sure if I've ever written about this before... but I think it's really interesting to hear about other family's traditions, so I thought I would share some of the ones that I grew up with and still do today. Of course this year is a bit different or the retro depending how you think about it. I'm choosing to look at it that I get to go back to pure family traditions and don't have to even worry about complicating things with another family in the mix... it's kinda refreshing in a way.
Anyway enough of that!
One of the first traditions that I think I've done since I started driving - or shortly there after - is shopping for pajamas for all the grand children. I still take her out, we went a couple of weeks ago.
Another pre-Christmas tradition in our house is my mom baking like a bajillion cookies. This year is was 15 different kinds. When I was in my own house I made 3-5 different kinds. I have chosen not to bake as many (we already have way too many sweets in the house) but I am going to make cake balls, they're my speciality!
On Christmas Eve we've always gone to my mom's family. It started at my grandparent's house, and now takes place at my aunt Ruth's house. Due to her husband's family she's actually not there. We eat (my mom's family and my other aunt's family) and then we watch A Christmas Story on TBS. I absolutely love this tradition. When the movie wraps up is the same time that Ruth's family gets back and we get together and open presents. Within the last few years we've stopped doing stocking and drawing names. Instead we each bring a $20-25 gift and play Rob Your Neighbor. It's a lot of fun bringing everyone together to play the game... plus I can buy whatever I want to bring. It's really neat to see what people decide is a good gift to bring.
Christmas morning has taken place at a lot of different places, but this year it is old school and we're doing it at my mom's house. We open gifts (one at a time, gotta make the unwrapping last awhile) and then stockings. Then my mom makes a big breakfast and we all eat together. After breakfast we break into the board games we got (my mom always gets us each a board game... and you wondered where my obsession came from). We snack and play games all day long... it's wonderful.
For my entire life my dad's family has celebrated Christmas on Christmas day. This year we are celebrating on Christmas Eve. I will admit that I haven't been to this Christmas celebration for the last 4-5 years due to his family's celebration... but we also started doing a Rob Your Neighbor game at this house. It was much better than drawing names and getting a random gift card or craptastic gift. And it's really great to see this entire family in the same place at the same time focused on one thing. Over there, we eat buffet style and never sit down all together. I remember it being fun everyone being in the same room at the same time for one purpose.
The final Christmas celebrate is at my dad's house. This year it won't take place until next weekend (all for extending the celebration!) All of the kids draw names, which is fun. A few years ago we started doing party food for this celebration which is awesome. I absolutely LOVE party food... and it's really fun to make party food. This year I'm going to make jalapeno artichoke dip (or a new recipe that's similar but slightly different of jalapeno popper dip) and probably buffalo chicken dip. The party food is seriously my favorite part, how silly is that?
I know some people do different things when it comes to gifts under the tree. At my mom's she has everything wrapped up. She'll just write our names or different variations of the names (Jenn, Jenny, Jennasher, etc). At my dad's house, there is one special 'santa' gift that's wrapped in special paper. For me, wrapping is my absolute favorite thing ever... no package is complete without a bow.
What are your favorite Christmas traditions?
1 comment:
You forgot your Christmas pickle tradition!
And my favorite tradition growing up was mom making biscuits and gravy every Christmas morning.
With Drew's family, he got a new ornament every year of his life, that represented something big that happened that year (this year, we got one with our wedding date on it). When he moved out in 2007, he had 23-24 ornaments for his first Christmas tree.
We also do the pajama thing every year. Our Christmas is kind of "off" now, because he is a police officer and works Christmas eve and day. So we celebrated this evening together- I've got a new pair of maternity pajamas to wear in the hospital! :)
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