Christmas Family Traditions

Christmas is a time for many families to come together and celebrate. My family is full of Christmas traditions that we all look forward every year. Our Christmas traditions actually start the first weekend in November. This is the weekend that the Christmas tree farm opens. We don't actually take our tree home that early, but we go out into the field and tag the perfect tree. We go back after Thanksgiving to pick up our tree and take it home with us. The ride to and from the tree farm is always made with Christmas music in the CD player and while at the farm, everyone sits by the fireplace to drink a cup of hot chocolate. Most people don't make two trips to a tree farm that is over 45 minutes away from their home, but we have been doing this for over 15 years now.

In the few weeks of December before Christmas, all of the female members of my family get together to make homemade candies and fudge. We each bring our own ingredients and recipes. We spend the entire day baking, cooking and talking with family. At the end of the day we split all of the candy so that everyone gets an equal share of each kind of candy.

Between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve we go shopping regularly. The whole family gets together the day after Thanksgiving to go shopping. When the sale papers come out on Thanksgiving Day, we go through them and map out our destinations for Friday morning. We wake up at around 4:00 a.m. and all meet at someone's house. We all go separate ways according to who needs what and then meet up again at around 10:00 a.m. to eat breakfast together. There are at least two more weekends where we will all get together and go out of town to shop.

Another tradition that we look forward to is looking at lights on Christmas Eve. We go to the movie theater to watch a Christmas move at around 4:00 p.m. We will then look for a restaurant that is still open and eat appetizers until it gets dark outside. Then it is time to pile into one or two vehicles, turn up the Christmas music, and drive around looking at Christmas lights on all of the houses. After driving around for about an hour, we go home, wrap all of the last minute presents and go to sleep. We wake up early and all meet at one house to exchange gifts and eat Christmas dinner.

Our family has some unique Christmas traditions, but we all look forward to each and every one them. Without these traditions, it would not feel like Christmas.