This has always been a really hard category for me. I LOVE Christmas! There is nothing about this season I don’t like short of maybe crowds of rude people and Black Friday.
Sometimes seeing things through someone else’s eyes can give the same old traditions new meaning an in the long run that can also make the favorite traditions and the memories mean that much more.
If I had to pick just one tradition though, it would be putting up the tree as a family while eating leftover turkey (from Thanksgiving) sandwiches. When I was a kid we usually put our tree up the day after Thanksgiving and leave it until Kings Day, the Epiphany on January 6th. Hubby and I still do that and for that reason we like to go cut our own tree so it’s fresh and lasts the entire time. I use an apple cider/sugar mix that keeps the sap from forming on the cut area and keep the water cool and full.
When I was a kid we did a BIG family get together with a buffet of food and opening our family presents on Christmas Eve. I just saw a few of my cousins recently and we were reminiscing about some of those holidays and LOL how horrible our wardrobes were back then.
Then on Christmas Day we would do Christmas morning and “Santa” with just the immediate family followed by a BIG turkey with all the trimmings including my dad’s stuffing and giblet gravy with ALL the family as well as extended family, which included crazy Aunt Louise and Uncle Herb. I replicated dad’s stuffing recipe a few years ago (Oatnut Sourdough Herb Dressing) and that is now a MUST TRADITION for the Christmas meal no matter what the protein is.
Our newest tradition in the last several years is watching Christmas movies and dreaming about moving to every small town depicted in them, kind of like Stars Hollow from the Gilmore Girls. We loved that show!