post a favorite Christmas memory, tradition, gift, thought, saying, movie......anything! Just keep in light and happy! Mine are: Movie: It's a Wonderful Life Gift: Minga, my doberman
Way back in the beginning of this family we went out to eat on Christmas eve. At that time the only restaurant that was open was the Golden Dragon Chinese restaurant. (There are now probably 30 + restaurants open in our town.) It has become the tradition of our family to eat Chinese food on Christmas eve. Our kids have carried this tradition on in their families. After our meal the past several years we have gone to my sister's to share in their traditional Polish Christmas eve meal.
One of my favorite things to do at Christmas is going caroling with our church choir at nursing homes. I remember one lady telling us a story from her childhood. One Christmas morning when she was quite small, her parents had smudged a "lip print" on her cheek with soot while she was still asleep. She said she spent the whole day showing people where Santa had kissed her!
Christmas break, my tradition... seeing how long I can sleep in! Favorite movie... hhhmmmm lets seee... ELF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Favorite Present... my rabbit Doc, unfortunantely he was old and he died of old age 6months later. RIP Doc
I have many wonderful Christmas memories from my own childhood but several years ago I started one with me and just my grandkids, all 5 of them. On a day where everyone can get together, no swim practices or school swim meets, no basketball games, no piano lessons, no play rehersals, no school days, we have our annual Christmas cookie baking and decorating get together. I will be the one to make and roll out the cookie dough and they use the Christmas cookie cutters and cut out their cookies. I'll put their cut outs on each one's cookie sheet and they do the decorating. On my large dining room table, spread with a festive plastic tablecloth, they all have red, green sprinkles, cinnamon hots, peppermint flavored sprinkles, every other color of the rainbow sprinkles, decorative icings, anything Christmasy. Their creations are amazing, where do they come with that stuff? ha They all range from ages 10-15 and I know there won't be too many years left where all of them will even want to spend a whole day decorating and baking cookies with their "Mimi" so I'll enjoy it while I can.
My favorite memory of this holiday season is from childhood. We were in Germany at an outdoor Christmas market at night. My brother and I had mugs of hot cocoa and a paper cone full of fresh roasted chestnuts to split between the two of us. It was snowing. As perfect as it gets. <3
Well, Christmas is my favorite holiday so I have a ton of things that I love about it. I'll keep it short and tell you a few of our traditions When I was around 12 years old my mother figured out I was good at wrapping and decorating gifts. I ended up doing all of that every year so that it would be pretty on Christmas morning. I still go all out on gift wrapping. Even stocking stuffers get wrapped and ribboned. The kids won't touch a thing until we have pictures from every angle! When the kids are out of school for Christmas break it can get hectic and stressful at home. Five kids, a small house, and Christmas Fever can put everyone in a bad mood, quick! I throw them all in the car and we go looking for Christmas lights. The kids tell me which way to turn, (yes, we've gotten lost a few times), and we stop for treats while we're out even if it will ruin dinner. Even the teenagers still have fun with it. We always change something after the kids go to bed on Christmas Eve. Sometimes we'll redecorate the tree, go from red ornaments to blue or whatever. Sometimes we move the tree. One year we hung lights all over the room. Just something to surprise the little ones on Christmas morning.
Once when my kids were little - they told us they no longer believed in Father Christmas. DH and I went out to the coal bunker and got these massive blocks of coal and washed them wrapped them in lovely christmas paper and ribbon and set them beside each sleeping child instead of a stocking! Then we waited! Next morning there were screams of shock and horror as the familier stocking full of treats was replaced by coal. They came running. We of course explained that only children who believed in santa actually got gifts - they were not convinced and ran down stairs to the tree. But there was nothing their either - we hid all their toys up the hall way! It was fantastic! The screams and shouts of We do We do we do believe in Santa!!!!!!!!!! We did of course eventually give them their christmas gifts! But it was worth it!!!!!!!! Ha ha! Oes
My Brothers and I no longer exchange material gifts. We instead each do something charitable and share that gift of giving. It has become my favorite Christmas tradition.
