My Holiday Traditions

Today I’m going to be talking about my Christmas traditions! I don’t think my family does anything super unusual, but we do have certain things we do every year around this time.

Every year, I try to shop for presents in advance and save things up throughout the year so that I’m not scrambling to get everything at the least minute. My favorite type of present is the kind that shows that you know the person well or that you pay attention to them. For example, sometimes I’ll get my best friend something she mentioned really wanting when we were shopping months ago. I also love homemade presents because I appreciate all the hard work that goes into making them and they’re usually very unique. The exception to those rules are books. I may have a bad habit of trying to spread my love of reading to my friends and family, haha.

A few weeks before Christmas, my family and I set aside a few hours to put up our Christmas tree and decorate it. For most of my life, we’ve had an artificial tree. For about three years, we tried getting real trees, but my cats liked to play in them and chew on the leaves and then the bristles would make a mess. So, we’re back to using an artificial tree. We switch back and forth between the way we decorate it. One year we’ll use white lights and the “nice” ornaments — the pretty, fancy ones. The next year we’ll use the colorful lights and the more personalized ornaments. Afterwards, we start putting presents under the tree.

We also set up a train that goes around the tree. When I was younger, I used to love playing with the characters in the village we set up between the train and the presents. We also decorate the front of our house and all of our windows with lights. My mom sets up a display in our front window with candles and a few pieces from a ceramic Christmas village.

On Christmas Eve, we usually watch Christmas movies during the day. I love to watch Home Alone while I drink sugar cookie eggnog 😍 At night, my immediate family exchanges the presents we got each other. When my brothers and I were younger, we would bake cookies and leave them out for Santa. We would also sprinkle “reindeer food” on our front lawn (I think it was just a combination of seeds, haha).  Then on Christmas morning we would open our presents from Santa. Next, my grandparents on my dad’s side would come over and spend the day. We’d have an early dinner, which would usually include my mom’s homemade lasagna. After dinner, we’d exchange gifts with my grandparents and have dessert. We’d finish the night off by watching more Christmas movies.

The past few years, we’ve done things a little differently because unfortunately my grandparents passed away. In that time, my parents also broke the news about Santa to my brothers. Now, we save some presents for my immediate family to exchange on Christmas morning. Then we spend the day at my aunt’s. My uncle usually makes a ham and some vegetables (which are good, but they’re no homemade lasagna 😉). We exchange presents and spend the day talking and relaxing.

So those are my Christmas traditions! Even though they’re a bit standard, they always make Christmas feel special. It’s easily one of my favorite holidays of the year. Please comment and let me know if you have any holiday traditions 🙂 ❤