Memories of Christmas Traditions with My Family

Every year when the leaves have begun to change and the weather has made us trade in our shorts and bathing suits for pants and jackets. I'm reminded of my childhood growing up in New England and the Christmas traditions my family and I had. Before I moved out of the house, Thanksgiving and Christmas where always very popular tradition based holidays. After engorging ourselves on a Thanksgiving feast for kings we would start nagging our mother about our Christmas tree and when we would start to decorate. Since she was / still is allergic to pine we were forced into buying a fake tree (that I thought for many years took away from the allure of Christmas, but realize now that not having to clean up all those dead pine needles made it worth it). A few days after Thanksgiving we would have a whole day where my father would put on his Christmas music, including the classics and many popular renditions sung by a boys gospel choir whose name escapes me, and we would grab our individually packed decorations out of storage and strategically decorate out tree.

When Christmas finally rolled around my family and I would usually stick around the house, plan our Christmas dinner and watch a lot of movies such as Charlie Browns Christmas, It's A Wonderful Life etc. When Christmas Day finally arrived I would usually wait in my bed until my extremely excited older sister came to wake me up to see the presents around the tree. We would quickly go to wake our parents up and finally start unwrapping presents from Santa. My father would prepare a feast of eggs, potatoes and corned beef hash for breakfast while we sat around our tree, listened to Christmas tunes and opened our presents.

Depending on whose "turn" in the family it was to host Christmas, after breakfast and lounging around in our pajamas playing with out newly acquired presents we would start making and receiving phone calls to wish everyone and merry Christmas and figure out what time we were going to meet.

Growing up with my mothers cooking spoiled me so my favorite place to hold Christmas was at our house. However if the get together were held elsewhere I would be forcefully dragged there to consume what I felt was mediocre food and awkwardly open presents that I really didn't want.

Christmas was always a really special and really important time for my family and I. Like many others, I unfortunately have moved away and usually work during the holidays but the memories of Christmas at home will be permanently etched in my mind.