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12.26.2007

A Christmas Tradition

So I love Christmas. I love the magic. I love the extra reason to talk about Jesus Christ with my kids. I love the smells, the tastes and the memories of it all. I love Santa too. I love giving gifts...and is this terrible...but I love getting gifts too. And I love traditions.

For Christmas we do lots of the normal traditions...an advent calendar all month, leave Santa a note with milk, and share gifts Christmas Eve. Growing up, I recall drinking Orange Julius and eating waffles made by my mom Christmas morning after rummaging through all of the great stuff Santa left behind. My husband's family acts out the nativity on Christmas Eve and although I am not by any means good at role playing I look forward to dressing Kara up as Mary and Jared as Joseph or a shepherd in the coming years. My own little family adopted the tradition to do something special on December 8th. This was the day my husband and I exchanged gifts our first Christmas (before we were even engaged) and it happens to be the day that Christmas "starts" in Italy (my second home!) I have dreams of doing service or being more organized so as to enjoy the traditions more fully but alas I'll have to try again in 364 days.

My point? What are some of your Christmas traditions?

3 comments:

Cassi said...

We have so many traditions. Most of the came from my family but we've also tried to invent some new ones. Some of them include: a Mexican dinner on Christmas Eve, acting out the nativity, opening one present on Christmas eve which is always new pajamas, we give a gift to Christ every year by writing down a goal for the year and putting it with everyone else's in a wrapped box, we do a scavenger hunt to find out where our family trip for the year will be. On Christmas morning we wake up ridiculously early and go down to check out our Santa gifts and stockings then we take turns opening all the other presents. Santa alway puts a cute ornament in all my kids stockings that has their name and the year on it. Then it's tuffy time, our big meal of the day is breakfast.
That's about it. Traditions are so fun, especially when you're creating them for your own family!

Anna said...

Growing up we would have a big Christmas Eve dinner, program and of course set out cookies and milk. During Christmas Eve Day, we would have a wild goose hunt and play games for gifts. All of the girls would sleep in the same room, wake up at 5:30 am, had to be dressed with our beds made and rooms picked up, had to wait until 6 to wake up parents, then would Sing Happy Birthday to Jesus, and then sit on the stairs while Dad took his time setting up cameras and oohhhing and aaaahhhing over all the stuff. Then we would tare down the stairs and find our stash, open gifts shortly after and eat clam chowder for lunch.

Bridget said...

Isn't Christmas the best? As a kid my family always did fun things, but nothing really consistenly from year to year. So, we've pretty much taken over Justin's family traditions. On Christmas eve we have a "feast" of tons of appetizer foods (egg rolls, taquitos, anything fatty and delicious!) and "Christmas punch" (cranberry juice, orange juice, and ginger ale). Then, we read Christmas books, set out cookies, and watch Scrooge. On Christmas morning we take turns opening presents and then we've added the tradition of a breakfast of crepes (courtesy of my wonderful husband who served in France). Then it's tons of games and Christmas cookies for the rest of the day. I love it all and am so glad that we have our own little family to do all these fun things with!