Christmas - Our Family Traditions

Christmas is probably the biggest Holiday in almost any family. There are many traditions surrounding the Christmas Holiday. In my family it is especially true that it's probably the most celebrated holiday since Christmas Eve is my Mother's Birthday and a time of year where we make time for family. Each year we decorate the interior of our house with beautiful Christmas decorations. Tree decorating when we were younger was always a huge part of those decorations as us kids would always have our special ornaments that would have to adorn the tree. Baking is essential in our family as well. There are always certain baked goods that have to be made including mom's fudge, nut crescents, and sugar cookies. A huge Christmas Eve dinner including pork and roast, morale mushroom soup, ribbon jell-o, layer lettuce salad and more were all part of our giant dinner feast. Finally, opening presents from Santa completes the tradition process. The events leading up to Santa's gifts were always the most intricate, unbeknownst to us kids.

Each Christmas Eve after dinner we celebrate Mom's Birthday and open her presents to keep her birthday separate from our Christmas Celebration. Then before Church Service we would all pile into the car to head to the church. Just as we were ready to take off Mom would always remember something she forgot to grab before we left and run back into the house. Then Dad would remember something he forgot, or he would have to use the bathroom and would head back in to help 'Santa' fill the stockings and put out the presents. It always took forever to get going to the church and we never understood why they couldn't take care of that stuff after we came home. Returning home from church, Santa had always arrived. We would then open presents and eat some of the baked goods while we enjoyed each other's company. Bedtime on Christmas Eve was always around 2 or 3 am. Since Santa had already visited our house, one of the first stops on his route, we could sleep in Christmas morning. Mom and Dad were good planners. This way we wouldn't wake them up at 5 in the morning to open our presents. Christmas Traditions have evolved each year since us kids are older, but we will always remember the fun Christmas traditions we had. As we have families of our own we will make sure to implement some of those traditions in with the traditions that have been added over time into special memories for our children.