Thursday, December 25, 2008

Christmas Traditions

What are some of your traditions during this time of year? Some of ours are from childhood, but a lot of them are from our time as a family. But they are traditons that hopefully mean something to our children and will be carried on.

Christmas Eve is when we open presents. When I was a child we always opened presents then. And when hubby and I spent our first Christmas together that was one of my first questions. He's an Eve, too. That was such a relief. I have a hard time waiting for Christmas Eve, much less Christmas Day.

Our first Christmas in our own place, we had a sad Charlie Brown tree. We paid $5 for it from a discount store. When we put it together we realized why it was so cheap. It was missing some of it's branches and what there was of them didn't spread out enough to cover the tree. A friend had given us a bunch of ornaments she no longer used so that helped. But the poor thing still needed some serious help. So we took all the cards we got and put them on the tree. It looked fantastic after that. It looked full and beautiful and you couldn't see the bald spots. That is something we still do to this day. All cards go on the tree even though we have a great tree now.

Our stockings are always filled by us. I'm not real sure where it came from, but that is something we have always done with our kids. Santa leaves a present, we fill the stockings. And the kids are alright with that. They actually look forward to what Mama and Papa have done.

And then there is the cookies. Our kids always put out chocolate chip cookies. I know, Santa usually prefers sugar, but that doesn't stop him from eating the chocolate chip ones. But he never cleans up after himself. He always leaves crumbs and a yucky milk glass. But that's alright, too. He always leaves presents wrapped in Santa paper.

All the presents he leaves have Santa on it, and I think that's really cool. But the really cool thing is that he uses ink that only Mama and Papa can see to put the names on the packages. The kids are so upset they can't see his writing. But that's a new one that started today ;).

I could go on and on, but that would take forever. I hope you have traditions that you enjoy. And I hope you all had a Merry Christmas.

Have a great day!

3 comments:

Scott said...

Awww... such a nice holiday blog post. We've always been a Christmas Day family, with one present opened on Christmas Eve. Now, a Christmas Eve tradition for me is to go to my former boss's house to her annual Christmas Eve get-together. It's usually family and a few close friends, but she invites me to come every year and it's so nice to see her and her family. I've watched them grow over the years and her oldest child is now a freshman at Baylor. I remember my grandmother always taped the Christmas cards to the back of the front door. I don't know why she did that, but I always liked it.

Speaking of Santa, one Christmas we woke up and it must have just been after Santa had left. It was about 3:00 am and we wanted to open presents, and we got a loud resounding NO in return. But we knew that after 7:00 am was fair game. :)

I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas!

Love you,
Scott

Anonymous said...

Our kids are frustrating that they can't see the special ink, either. We go to the children's Mass on Christmas Eve and then go to Olive Garden for dinner. We go home, the girls get into their pajamas, and then they make Santa cookies with Daddy. While they cook, we sprinkle reigndeer (sp?) food on the lawn and I read The Night Before Christmas to them. We set up the cookies for Santa and they go to bed. Last night, the reigndeer made a loud racket on the rood and Daddy and I didn't get much sleep. Miss you guys!!!

Anonymous said...

No, really I can spell AND type much better than that!!