Something I love about Christmas are the unique ways it's celebrated by different families and across different cultures. We are in the stage of creating our own Holiday traditions as well as choosing which traditions we keep from our own childhoods. A favorite of mine is wearing our traditional "Jingle Jams" (Christmas PJ's) recently the girls in my family have taken to having matching Christmas day outfits. We're still working on getting the guys to participate. One of my childhood traditions that has lived on is the "Christmas Game." When we were all much younger we would load up in one of our parents cars as they drove us around to look at Christmas lights. This was no leisurely car ride though, as soon as one of us saw a house with lights or decorations we would yell "Christmas!" You got one point for every "Christmas" you yelled out. Now it's second-nature to yell it out no matter who is in the car. I remember the first time I let out a "Christmas" yell while in the car with my husband he had a reaction that was a mixture of humor and confusion. I'm not sure he fully invested in the game until we were in a car with my family and Christmas chaos ensued.
My favorite thing to collect during the Holiday season is memories and I am happy to see that type of mind-set spreading. I'm not anti-gifts, I love them, but gifts don't always need to be a physical object. We are taking a "Christmas Vacation" to Walt Disney World this year (you can read my post about planning a Christmas vacation here). Family movie tickets or Theater tickets are usually under our tree or tucked away in a stocking. On more than one occasion Alabama Football tickets have made an appearance. Giving a gift though isn't about making yourself feel good it's about making the other person feel loved. We're a big family, even bigger now that we are married, so there is no shortage of gifts under the tree and there is nothing like seeing the joy on someones face when they love their gift.
At the advice of one of my aunts, my husband and I began to collect an ornament from everywhere we visited. We started on our honeymoon and have enough "memories" for a small tree this year. We also got engaged on Thanksgiving eve so many people were kind enough to get us an ornament representing our engagement and that first Christmas. As we put up our small 4ft tree in our bedroom we talked about each ornament and the memories that it held. After it was all put together we each picked our favorite ornament and talked about it's memory. It only took us a few minutes this year but I am excited to see our collection of memories grow.
What are some of your favorite Holiday traditions?
