Ramblings, Recipes, & Rants: Christmas Traditions

Every family has Christmas traditions, and Christmas memories let me give you a few examples of my favorite. Growing up we would all decorate the tree together, we would beg my parents for weeks to buy a Christmas tree and when they finally relented we would head off to Lowes or Home Depot pick one out, strap it to the minivan and drive home. My dad and brothers would unstrap the tree and bring it into the garage where they would trim off the rogue branches (with a saw that was way to heavy duty for this project) then we would bring the tree in and start decorating. My mom had what appeared to be boxes and boxes of Christmas ornaments, and I remember thinking they were so amazing. There were the little ceramic mice my parents painted in college, the close pin reindeer, puff ball bears, and wreaths that she made when we were really little, a glass bell will an angel that went in a special box (we reminded to be very carful with this one), popsicle stick ornaments we made with our pictures in elementary school, a Santa in a red wagon, and my personal favorite and red mail man bird that a Sunday school teacher gave me when I was in primary. We would fight over who got to put the “best” ornaments on the tree, and topped off the whole thing with a little red bear (we didn’t have an angel or a star). One of my other very favorite Christmas traditions was our Christmas morning ritual. Let me preface by saying I am not a patient person, it was all I could do to actually fall asleep on Christmas eve. I would wake up at the crack of dawn on Christmas morning (literally, close to 3 or 4 in the morning), and do my duty as the oldest child and wake up my siblings. I would wake them up in order, first Brandon, then Mug, then Em. We would quickly grab a blanket and make our way into my parent’s bedroom, we would usually send Emily in first since she was the littlest. We would try unsuccessfully to convince our parents that it was time to wake up and open presents, we were always unsuccessful. My dad would usually tell us not come back until it was light out. We would camp out by the tree shaking presnts and peeking into our stockings until it was a little bit light out (not light at all actually). Finally around 7am we would convince my parents to get up, we would rush to the tree as they moved painfully slowly to turn on the Christmas music and grab the camera, while I am sure this was one of their least favorite traditions it was one of my favorite. Plotting with my siblings for a shared cause was always a unique experience for us (Brandon and I tended to disagree on most things), and the anticipation made everything that much more fun. I am grateful to my parents for encouraging Christmas as a family time and have taken those experience into consideration as Brian and our started our own traditions. The first year we were married we decided we needed something unique to our family (maybe it isn’t unique). We decided that one tradition we would start was buying a new Christmas tree ornament every year. Let me explain, as I already mentioned in my family we had a few favorite Christmas ornaments, ones with stories, traditions and personal meaning. We always looked forward to taking these out of the box and placing them on the tree. So far we have participated in this tradition for 2 out of our 3 Christmases (I boycotted last year, too much to do). We go to the store and pick our very favorite ornament and let me just say we have ended up with two “different” choices, and two good choices. Guess who picked out which ones…

Glittery red star... fancy fancy