Sitting around the table last night, our family laughed about family traditions. Mainly, about how my father-in-laws's family would set their tree up on Christmas day and how his mother would still be wrapping in one room while people were unwrapping in another. And while I am sure Christmases in our family was never nearly that laughable, it did make me think about some of the fun family traditions when I was growing up. Here are a few things I remember from my childhood Christmases, although I am sure there are many others...
1) Making gifts. I remember making a belt hook holder for my brother. It was a piece of 2x4 with bent nails on it. I'm pretty sure it hung around for all of a couple of months. I also made a "Cold Treatment box" for my dad one Christmas. It was an old tin tea box filled with tylenol, Contac C, Neo-citron, etc. The all time favorite.... was the "Christmas decoration 3D collage" that I made for my grandparents. It was an old card glued to a piece of wood and to it, I glued little stocking erasers. While over for dinner one year in my 20s, I spotted it. She had kept it all those years. And while it was a little embarrassing, I have to admit that I was touched that she would keep that tacky little gift.
2) Candlelit Christmas Eve dinners with family friends. My parents always have family friends over for dinner. I remember one particular time having people over and they were quite surprised by the candles which they found very "romantic." That evening, we all sat around the fire, read the Christmas story and then dad strummed his guitar while we sang every song we knew until we could barely keep our eyelids open.
3) Opening our early gifts. I think parents sometimes let children open a present the night before so that they can get something out of their system and just go to sleep. I'm not sure that this was part of a parental ploy in our house, but we always did this. We were only allowed to open a certain one and never the "big one." I don't know that it ever worked.... (Read #4 and #5). But never the less, it was something we did until we left home.
4) Trying to sleep on Christmas Eve. Around Christmas, we each got an electric candle for our window sill and between that and the miniature artificial Christmas tree glowing, it was so bright and it was difficult to settle for all the excitement of Christmas morning.
5) Early morning stocking raids. On Christmas morning, I was always, always the first one up. I would creep into my siblings rooms to wake them up and we could raid our stockings. We'd dump out all the contents and find, to our delight, all the chocolate a child could want. And so I'd eat each piece, yes, at 4:00 am, and get such a sugar rush that I'd barely make it through the day without feeling sick. I must have done this until I was about twenty when I was finally able to buy endless supplies of chocolate with my lifeguard pay cheque and had to learn some self-restraint. :)
6) PJs, knitted slippers and afghan blankets. Every year when we were young, my great Aunt Mary would give us knitted slippers, or PJs or, as we got older, an afghan for our beds. They were always beautiful and fit perfectly. She was the sweetest old lady I ever knew and we only saw her about once a year, so getting such a thoughtful gift from her was very touching. In fact, to this day, I still have the afghan she knit for me when I was likely about 12 years old.
These family traditions were wonderful to have, and make me look back on the Christmases of my childhood with great warmth. Traditions change and morph and that is ok. The best part of family traditions is that you can make them your own and when they change, they are at the very least something to look back on with fondness.
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