Ti's the season for tradition. When Heather posted her post about her ornaments it reminded me of all of our traditions. So I was wondering what traditions you have. So post your traditions here in the comments or on your own blog.
My Grandma use to dress up as Santa Claus and we got to open a gift on Christmas Eve from "Santa's Helper". We continued the tradition when we moved to California. One year we were looking at pictures of us opening our presents and realized how ratty we looked. So that year we decided that on Christmas Eve we would open Pajamas. That way we looked cute on Christmas day. Stillman and I continued this on into our own little family.
One year all of our ornaments, stockings and decorations were stolen out of our rental shed along with some other things, by a bum who was living in the sheds. What wasn't stolen was burned by the fire he was using to keep warm. He was not hurt, we later saw him walking down the street in my mom's white furn coat. So Mom and I went to Costco in Reno and each bought one set of these beautiful white ornaments, some white lights, and some beads and bows. Brigitte and I had some ballerina ornaments that were not in the shed. That's all we had on our tree that year. So we decided that every year we would get an ornament in our stocking, so we could replace what was lost. Stillman and I do this also and when the kids are old enough to get married they will have 18+ ornaments to hang on their own tree.
Our last tradition is the twelve days of Christmas. We give a Twelve piece Nativity the twelve day before Christmas. This is my favorite because it helps bring the true meaning of Christmas to the foreground. last year we chose a family that was having a hard time. It was a Grandma who took care of her grandchildren full time. They were in our old ward and when we moved out I kept getting the feeling that I needed to do something for them. I pushed the thought aside because I didn't know how to get a hold of them as I new they were forced to move out of their apartment. When low and behold we were speaking in our new ward and I saw I them sitting on the back bench. We decided to do them for the twelve days of Christmas. on the Last day there was a note thanking us for the Nativity saying how they had lost theirs in the move. Over the next year she bore her testimony 3 times about her Christmas angels, never knowing we were sitting in the room with her.
So I would love to here your Christmas traditions.
7 comments:
Sounds like some great traditions! I would love to keep up the ornament one with Rowan and any future kids we have. I like your "12 day" one too- great story!
I love Christmas blogs! I've done more tearing up this month than in a long long time! I love the Nativity tradition! GREAT TRADITION !!
We are still working on traditions.
We of course, decorate the tree as a family every year. We have done the 12 days of christmas every year we have been married, but this year we are going to do something different, but just as good. We have our Christmas Dinner on Christmas Eve, and are lazy all day Christmas day and we only eat leftovers. As we move and are closer to family, I am sure we will start new traditions, but for now, these are they.
Oh I forgot one. Stillman and I always eat a christmas breakfast on our fancy china plates! last year i bought some christmas plates so we are going to use those this year.
Um... that pic of Stillman is kinda freaking me out! LOL. We have a tradition of going over to my parents on Christmas eve and having Nachos for dinner and opening presents. Yep, I said nachos! Feliz Navidad!
Great traditions! One that Dave's family has that is really fun and one that we will keep is called the pass around game. First, everyone who wants to participate (very young to very mature) will need to have their favorite treat wrapped (i.e. a bag of M&M's or a bottle of sparking grape juice) in their festive wrapping paper. Then one family member will then proceed to tell a very recognizable story about the past year or the past years (like the story of how your parents got engaged is a really good one or even about the story of your little ones first experience decorating for Christmas). The story teller will have to be prepared with the story written with the words "left and "right" as many times as possible (i.e. ...and dad got right down on his left knee and proposed right there in the middle of the football field). Every time you hear the word right or left you pass the gift accordingly. It is fun or all!! Merry Christmas!!
I'm with Heather on this one; we're still working on establishing our traditions :-). But when I was growing up, here are a few:
* Yep, use the nice China for Christmas dinner! And 7-up & cran-raspberry juice for our drinks...
* On Christmas Eve, we'd read the Christmas story out of the Bible, (and I think it might be fun to read pertinent parts out of the Book of Mormon, too!), then turn off the lights in the room and lay on the floor while we looked at the Christmas light patterns from the tree on the ceiling.
* Breakfast casserole for Christmas breakfast
* Gifts from Santa had our names, but gifts from parents had hidden numbers instead of names. We'd take turns picking gifts from under the tree, then have to refer to Mom & Dad's key to find out whose they were so we could "deliver" them. Very fun, especially when Dad occasionally had trouble finding the hidden number he'd written on the package, too! ;-)
* Open one gift on Christmas Eve. I know some people do PJs for that gift, but we didn't have anything specific, LOL.
* We almost always made Christmas Spritz cookies, too, to deliver around to people. I think we limited it to like, 6-10 families or so, so that we could actually get it done...
* I've started trying to make my grandma's fudge recipe at Christmas time, too.
* Chocolate oranges in our stockings
* Hanging up our stockings on Christmas Eve
That's all I can think of for now, but I'm sure there were lots more, LOL...
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