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 which I don’t participate in, at least not in the physical presence. My extent of Black Friday shopping is a bit of Amazon shopping from the couch.
Sometimes seeing things through someone else’s eyes can give the same old traditions new meaning and 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 would leave it until at least Kings Day, the Epiphany on January 6th.
Hubby and I USUALLY 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 keeps the water cool and full. We were going to have a live tree this year,but this year we broke with tradition because of a fire at our local tree farm and so we used the artificial tree 🙁 Fortunately, the tree farm was able to open again for trees only, but the timing didn’t line up for us.
When I was a kid we did a BIG family get together with a HUGE buffet of fun food and we opened our family presents on Christmas Eve. My cousins and I were recently reminiscing about some of those holidays and LOL how horrible our wardrobes were back then. Thankfully, I’m not in the top picture because I remember what I was wearing! But I love my brother’s plaid pants and Monica’s floral blouse. If you don’t hear from me for a few days I’m SURE it’s because one them found me after seeing that I posted this picture LOL 😀😀
FORTUNATELY, My mom retired that tablecloth finally, unfortunately it was only a couple years back! I never did like it so that made me very happy!
Then on Christmas Day we would do Christmas morning and “Santa” with just the immediate family followed by a BIG turkey dinner 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 Thanksgiving and Christmas meals no matter what the protein is.
Hubby reminded me recently that a fun tradition we did when our youngest was still at home was have birthday cake for Christmas morning breakfast. LOL I didn’t really consider this a “Christmas” tradition so have never really talked about it. Eric’s birthday is on Christmas. My cousin’s is on Christmas Eve and I grew up watching her feel slighted because so many people would round her birthday and Christmas into one big ball. After we grew up I would send her birthday present wrapped in bright colorful paper in October 😀 She always knew she could open it early and it made her feel better. In that same tradition I would make Eric a birthday cake for breakfast that didn’t resemble Christmas in any way and we would start Christmas morning with birthday and then transition into Christmas around the tree.
But, what was is just that, WAS so our newest tradition in the last several years is watching Christmas movies, just the two of us and dreaming about moving to every small town depicted in them, kind of like Stars Hollow from the Gilmore Girls. We loved that show!