My favorite is the Christmas Eve play. Watching my kids do it brings such good memories. We had a lot of fun as kids. One thing we didn't do was the cake and I wish we would have. We do sing the special birthday song though.
Nate's Family draws names from a hat to see who's turn it is to open a gift Christmas morning. It is so fun to see each kids face as they open their gift and hear the other kids get excited to see what their brother or sister got.
I love making christmas candy. Toffee and honey candy, as well as peanut butter fudge.
When our kids came along we decided to get an ornament for each of them each year. It is so fun to see them put them up on the tree and remember the years that they got them. When they get married they get to take them for their own tree. These are this years
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| Meg |
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| Brook |
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| Bristole |
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| Paul (1 foot tall) |
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| Anthony |
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| Me (indian paintbrush, my favorite wildflower) |
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| Nate |
I also love taking the little ones to see the man in red who is normally not mentioned in our house.
Those are the best of our traditions.
Share some of yours in the comments. It's always fun to see what is special to your families.
4 comments:
We've never been good at the whole holiday thing, but we do have a few traditions.
(1) We have our tree of gratitude that Russ made (from tie wire). Every Thanksgiving, we sit down as a family & cut leaves out of construction paper. We place the the leaves & some pens beside the tree for the next month +. Everyone writes things they are grateful for on the leaves & hangs them on the tree. Everyone who visits our house during the holiday season has to fill out a leaf too. On New Year's, we take them all down & store them in an envelope with the year on it.
(2) We make cinnamon rolls (& sometimes orange rolls) for breakfast on the mornings of Christmas & Thanksgiving.
(3) Like the Henries, we always let the kids open a present on Christmas Eve.
(4) We go check out the Christmas lights at least once between Thanksgiving & Christmas.
(5) We're not really into standard Christmas music, so we have an iPod playlist of Christmas rap that we listen to. It makes us laugh. :)
(6) We may be starting a new tradition this year. We're doing advent gifts for the kids. They have a small gift to open everyday from 12/1-12/24. Some days it's gum or fun sized candy bars. Other days it's socks, earbuds, gloves, or other small or practical items they've recently requested. So far, they LOVED it so much & have even gotten excited on gum days. Tanisha said that we have to do it again next year. :)
Oh....& as for food:
(7) Our big meal changes slightly from year to year, but almost always includes green bean casserole & mashed potatoes & gravy. Our treats are more consistent each year. We always make peanut butter fudge & my grandma's buttermilk pie. We also like to make Scandinavian almond bars, vanilla snowballs, & what we call "pie crust treat." For appetizers, our go-to is southern pimento cheese. :)
Just remembered one more thing (I should have thought about this awhile before hitting "submit"!! lol)
(8) My mom's side of the family has a tradition of being the first to say "CHRISTMAS GIFT!!!!" to each other. So if we're at each other's house, you try to be the first one to say it (kind of like how you try to be the first one to say "UNO!") when you see another person in the morning. If we're not together, the first person to think of it makes a rash of calls to everyone else. Of course, this has morphed over the years. Now that my grandparents are gone, they don't get the be the winners...like they almost always were before. Also, with advances in technology (e.g., caller id), it tips you off on who is calling. We've entered this grey area lately where if my mom or cousin call me on Christmas morning, I answer with "CHRISTMAS GIFT!!!!" to beat them to it. We can't decide on whether or not that's cheating....& we're not sure about whether Facebook posts count. lol
Music playing all the time (and he saw, and he saw)
cookie baking
gingerbread boys with everyones names
silver iciles on the tree
my mom loved these
Christmas eve nativity play
you kids always made me smile laugh and cry
sending cards
my mom was so good at doing this
birthday cake for Jesus and singing the special song from Ephraim Elementary
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