In the spirit of Julie Andrews and the 12 days of Christmas I thought I'd take a moment and share some of my favorite things about the Holiday season.
1. Christmas Carols
We have sirius XM radio and my favorite stations right now are 4-Christmas Traditions, 58-Country Christmas, & 70-Holly. With painstaking self-control I wait until the day after Thanksgiving to officially switch to only listening to Christmas music. Because of these stations I don't ever grow weary of listening to the carols since they each offer their own twists on Christmas Classics and I've heard quite a few new songs like "Christmas Island," "Dominick the Donkey" and "Hey Santa."
2. Christmas Lights
I'm sure it's no surprise that I love Christmas lights. Every night that our tree is up I bask in it's glow and am mesmerized by it. I am continually searching them out when I am driving. I make it a point each year to plan one night where we go out after dinner to drive around and look at the lights. I hope to make it to Callaway Gardens one year to see their display.
3. Christmas Trees
This may be my absolute favorite part of the season. I love seeing the trees trimmed with all different kinds of decorations. My life goal is to have a tree in every room of my house. We bought three trees the day after Christmas last year so I am well on my way to accomplishing that goal. My main tree in the living room is decked out in crimson and gold ornaments, with a touch of burlap and pine-cones. Our second tree is a "memory" tree which holds all of our ornaments that tell a story. Read more about it in my previous blog post: Christmas Traditions. I have plans for a "food" tree in the kitchen, this one will have baked cinnamon ornaments & popcorn garland. The others I'm keeping under-wraps.
4. Wrapping Paper
Yes, I am one of those people who coordinates her wrapping paper with the tree. In my opinion it really brings the whole look together. I also buy my wrapping paper on sale the day after Christmas. Imagine my surprise this year when I realized I had bought double sided wrapping paper! So instead of having two new styles under the tree I actually had four.
5. Quality Time
Even if it's only for one day most people are able to have time off from work. That doesn't necessarily mean they will be able to travel and see their families but that doesn't mean quality time is lost. You can have time to yourself to marvel in the season, drink a cup of hot chocolate and turn on a Christmas movie. Which brings me to my next favorite thing...
6. Christmas Movies
There are very few Christmas movies that I don't like. Some are higher up on the list than others but I've even come around to liking ELF in the last few years. My all time favorite is "The Santa Clause" with "White Christmas" as a very close second. While my husband and I don't have cable I still thoroughly enjoy a good Hallmark Christmas movie. I don't care if they all have the same basic plot-line, I will watch any and all of them and enjoy it just the same. This is something my sister and I like to do when I make the trip back to the farm.
7. Ornaments
I don't limit my love of ornaments to just the Christmas season. We always pick up an ornament to add to our "memory" tree whenever we travel somewhere new. So far we have ones from Seattle, Canada & Pigeon Forge. In the next few days I expect to add one from Walt Disney World. You can read all about what I learned while planning my trip in this blog. I'm also making a trip out to Texas to visit my husbands family and I expect I'll pick up an ornament there as well. When putting together our memory tree from this year I realized we hadn't picked one up on any of our trips to Texas.
8. Tea-Light Villages
Growing up I had a friend who had the largest Christmas Village Display of anyone I knew. It was her mother's collection who (if I remember correctly) had started the collection on her honeymoon in Gatlinburg, TN (right next door to Pigeon Forge where we had our honeymoon). If it wasn't her honeymoon it was some other trip to that area. We started our own "collection" in the same manner. I haven't yet found the perfect one to add this year but we started with a church that had a stained glass window, since some of our wedding pictures were in front of the stained glass windows of our church.
9. Reindeer
The reindeer is my favorite symbol of the Christmas season. Yes I like Santa and Snowmen, but the reindeer is the one I'm really drawn to. Who knows-maybe one day I'll have an entire tree of reindeer!
10. Advent Calendars
These weren't terribly popular when I was young, at least not in the small town I grew up in. I was first introduced to the Advent Calendar when I went home with a friend from college, her mother had gotten each of us one. It was filled with different chocolates and I was instantly hooked. They seem to be much easier to find now, but that could be due in part to the fact that I live in a more culturally diverse city. Never the less you can find them in lots of varieties (not just candies) this year I have seen make-up calendars, sock calendars & nail polish calendars, all easily accessible. Last year when I was looking for a non-candy advent calendar I could only find them in the UK.
11. Family Traditions
Everyone has them but none are exactly the same. That's the beauty in a family tradition. I wrote a whole blog post on our family traditions, which you can read here. I love learning how different families celebrate and how Christmas varies from one culture to another. For example; did you know that a traditional Russian “Santa” wears a blue coat instead of red?
The Real Sasha has written a blog on Christmas characters around the world. Including this Russian Santa.
12. Peace on Earth
I love what this season brings. Whether you are celebrating a spiritual Christmas or a consumerist Christmas, or another Winter holiday, we are all, for a brief moment, united in the spirit of peace on earth. Let us try to hold onto it a little longer every year.
