Week Four

Holiday Traditions

We have a LOT of those around this family. Here’s a few:

• Christmas Jammies-Each member of the family opens ONE package before going to bed on Christmas Eve. It’s ALWAYS Christmas Pajamas.
• Christmas Eve Game Night-Each Christmas Eve we have a BIG get together. Everyone brings a dish to share so there’s plenty of food. We play board games and card games. If you win you get to unwrap and keep a white elephant “prize”. We play until we’re tired or until the prizes are gone.
• Something to Read-You can always count on the big guy bringing you something to read on Christmas. Sometimes it’s a magazine in your stocking. Sometimes it’s a book under the tree. Always amazing.
• Stocking Shopping-Speaking of stockings…those tiny things have to be purchased. My husband and I developed a rather cool tradition completely by accident when we were first shopping for each other WAY back in college. We went to the only local Walgreens at the same time (because we probably walked in the snow) and shopped for each other. It was hilarious fun trying to avoid the other person in the small store. Since then it’s become a tradition. Hubs and I go every year. We get the ones we need to do together done first and then we split up and the game is on.
• Ham-I have no idea where this one started because the roots of the tradition are further back (and farther reaching) than my family. Every Christmas day we have a ham dinner. I’m pretty sure we all use the exact same brown sugar-mustard-beer-pineapple-and cherry recipe too. YUM!
• Fruitcake-I don’t think any of us actually eat it. But my family has a thing for passing it around. It all started with my Mom and a weird sense of humor (which is genetic, apparently). She bought a fruitcake and mailed it 3,000 miles to her brother. He did the only logical thing, he kept it and mailed it out to another relative a year later. That’s how it all started. Now? Well, now a fruitcake may randomly show up at the house of any living relative. It’s not the original (although that one lasted about a decade) but it still happens. We like to send random things to each other. In fact, I started up a new something this year. We will see if it keeps going.
• Night Before Christmas-Every night after everyone leaves the game night and the jammies have been opened the four of us snuggle on the couch and listen to my husband read “The Night Before Christmas”.