Christmas

Thanks for sharing your favorite Christmas memories/traditions.

Natalie said:

From my childhood, some of my favorite traditions were based on our parties with our huge extended family - the Christmas Eve gathering, with games and food, lots of singing, and the inevitable, highly anticipated visit from Santa - the Christmas morning re-gathering for breakfast. Good times.

A classic is getting new PJs on Christmas Eve.
Rob and I have celebrated a few on our own, and some of our traditions now are pretty good - we make a delicious meal of rotisserie chicken, loaded mashed potatoes, and stuffed mushrooms, and read parts of A Christmas Carol together, and burn a cinnamon candle. It's nice. :)

From Preethi:

Childhood - cooking Thanksgiving dinner while listening to the first strains of Christmas music, and putting up decorations the next day.

Adult life - participating in Handel's Messiah.

Ellen said:

This may seem strange, but one of my favorite things about Christmas is how we open gifts. This is the scenario: Oldest person (dad) goes under the tree and picks a gift for anyone, that person opens their gift and ohhs and awws along with everyone else and thanks the giver, second oldest person (mom) goes under the tree and picks a gift for someone, that person opens their gift and gushes all over it and hugs the giver, 3rd oldest person goes under the tree and so on and so on and so on until all the gifts are unwrapped, viewed and played with. It can take hours to open presents, sometimes it is even stopped for breakfast inbetween and than back to the gift giving. I love seeing the smiles on the faces of people I give gifts to.

Brittney shared this:

We always got PJs from my mom that she made on Christmas eve and we have gone up to my grandma's house in Logan on Christmas Eve for a family get together and sing-a-long for as long as I can remember. Both have always been fun.

My mom said:

One of my favorites is going to grandma's house and having Tom and Jerry's. I loved seeing my cousins and spending time with family. I still love to go to my mom's and continue this tradition. Love you. Hate the new tradition of you not being here at Christmas.

And from my mom-in-law:

I love reading the Christmas story together upstairs and praying together before going downstairs to open presents on Christmas morning. I love the corny picture we take of everyone coming down the stairs in their pajamas.

This year, I'm going to love being in Philadelphia with you two, having everyone together when Sam calls from France!

It was fun to hear from you all.

And now for a few of my own favorites.

We have always done those advent calendar thingys, where you eat a piece of chocolate every day in December until Christmas. On that same note, my mom has this calendar that has a little mouse that you can move each day to count down until Christmas. When we were kids, we used to fight over who got to move the mouse.

Bing Crosby! Zack doesn't quite get this one, but for me, nothing says Christmas like sitting by the tree looking at the lights and listening to a little Bing. We listened to him growing up and it just stuck.

On Christmas Eve, we used to always go to my great-grandma's house. There were always a ton of relatives there. Many of them I didn't really even know-- only saw them that 1 time every year. Great-grandma was known for getting us weird/random presents. It was so thoughtful of her to get something for every single one of her great grandchildren but it was still always kind of a running joke. Then we would go to my grandma's and have a family party with all my aunts and uncles and cousins. The kids would each get a little stack of presents, we would count down 3-2-1 and then everyone would rip open their gifts in a big frenzy. Often we would get similar gifts as our cousins. One example would be pajamas in different colors. We loved that. Some years we had a talent show too. Good times.

Cinnamon rolls for breakfast on Christmas.

When we were younger, our parents began the tradition of giving us an ornament each year that represented the year in some way. Examples: I have a Peter Pan ornament from the year we did that musical in high school. I have a Barbie ornament from the year I decided I was a princess and redecorated my room all in pink (and, in the interest of full disclosure, and lest you think this happened when I was a small girl, I guess I should include that I was probably 16 or 17 years old at that time). I have a Statue of Liberty ornament from the year my family vacationed in New York. And so on. Zack and I have continued that tradition, with some variation. We collect ornaments when we go on vacation. Sometimes we get one to represent the year, sometimes we get more. It just depends. We also get ornaments to represent some notable events in our lives (such as the Phillies winning the World Series a couple years ago). It is very fun/sentimental to decorate the tree as we reminisce.

I imagine I will not be blogging much in the next 2 weeks or so as I will have family staying with me, and I will still be working a lot. So Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all. I'll be back in 2011.