What is your family's favorite Christmas tradition?

LovesDubs

I was a Methodist for the first 30 years of my life, a JW in the middle 13 and then from 1997 have returned to my Christmas roots, albeit with a different perspective about what "religion" means to me. But Christmas is a big package which to me extends beyond the birth of Jesus. Ive had to re-start, and invent new, traditions for my kids and I as we are alone down here in Florida most Christmases, and all our relatives who are down here are JWs.

We love to put our Christmas tree up the weekend of Thanksgiving and enjoy it until after New Years day. We dont have a fireplace, but I have a cute DVD that a fellow Floridian gave me that turns your TV into a crackling fire with a beautiful piano sound track playing Christmas classics. We try to go see the Miami Ballet perform the Nutcracker at the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach (they make it SNOW in there!) We always go to Christmas Eve services, then go to a friend's home who always has an open house, and then have hot chocolate on Christmas Eve night and open one gift together before going to bed.

My youngest knows that Santa isnt real any more of course and he admitted to me that he faked it a few years longer for my sake :) ...but I still wait until the kids are all in bed before bringing out the presents to put under the tree. (usually my husband the JW makes himself scarce which is fine with me)

I love to sit there at midnight with only the lights from the tree on, in the quiet, with a glass of wine and my cats, and think about the year, think about my beautiful children and how blessed I am...and enjoy my own little Peace on Earth.

I know its a bit early, but Id love to hear what you all do :)

QuestioningEverything

This will be the first year since 1978 (I was 8) that I have participated in the holidays. My husband and I are both faders. We decided that instead of Christmas celebration, that we are going to start our own family tradition. We're going to celebrate New Years! We'll have a New Year's tree(which looks just like a X-mas tree) and decorate it. We'll open the presents on New Year's eve. The purpose of this is to celebrate the ending of a year together as a family and the start of of new one together. I'm so excited by this.

mrsjones5

Well I break out the Charlie Brown Christmas CD (gotta find that thing), watch "A Christmas Carol" as often as I can, my kids love having an advent calendar so I'm gonna find a really cute one for this year and thereafter, my hubby loves geting a real tree on Christmas Eve (which drives me crazy cuz I'm the one left to decorate it) but since he's sick and we have an artificial tree it will mostlikely go up after Thanksgiving, and me and the kids watch as many Christmas specials and cartoons that we can.

Meeting Junkie No More

Questioning Everything:

I love your idea! My significant other just can't seem to 'do Christmas', so maybe we could do the New Year tree! Thanks for sharing.

lovelylil

Decorating the Christmas Tree!

The very first year we put one up, my son who was 9 at the time stood in front of it and kept proclaiming how beautiful it was. To see the happiness on his face, moved me to tears.

As a family we love to decorate the tree together and sing spiritual songs. For us, the tree is a reminder that Christ is the light of the world. We also have some cookies and cocoa, with marshmellows of course. And it really is a fun day for us all.

Peace unto all, Lilly

Tuesday

My wife and I cook a gigantic breakfast for everyone on Christmas morning. We have both our parents over, they seem to dig it. Even if they eat WAY too much bacon. Last year between four parents, four lbs of bacon was eaten, and my wife and I didn't eat any of it.

Aculama

A few days before Christmas we visit Dollywood ( a theme park in pigeon forge TN ). They have shows and lights, hot chocolate, ect. My wife loves it, she dawns a childlike excitement at Christmas that is very endearing.

AWAKE&WATCHING

Wonderful ideas! I will be watching this thread because I am definitely looking to start some new traditions this year.

StAnn

Well, let's see. We have an advent wreath and we light the appropriate candle and read a scripture reading at dinner every night through Advent. We go caroling. We ride around in the car at least once the week of Christmas and look at lights and decorations while listening to a CD of A Christmas Carol. (I'm a Dickens fanatic.) We always go to downtown Cincinnati because they have a model train display in the CG&E building and several window displays that have been a Cincinnati tradition for 50+ years.

On Christmas Eve, we attend Midnight Mass. We come home, put the boys to bed, and then stay up most of the night putting up the tree. On Christmas morning, we have the following for breakfast: french toast, link sausage, bacon, breakfast pizza, latkas with your choice of applesauce or sour cream, cantaloupe with flaked coconut on top, orange juice, champagne, and coffee. We check to see what Santa brought (yes, Santa brings gifts to our home; the trick is, if you don't believe in him, he won't come!) and then I pass out on the couch from exhaustion while the boys play with their toys.

We leave the tree up through Epiphany.

DH is off work for several days through the Christmas holiday and the kids are out of school, so we try to go to daily Mass during that time. Daily Mass is at 7 a.m., when the boys are getting ready to get on the bus for school, so we generally can't attend midweek Mass.

We buy very few gifts. We usually buy one for each child, grandparents each buy one per child. This year, we are going to make almost all of our gifts. Except for my cousin, who needs clothes and wants the latest Indiana Jones DVD. We're having a family portrait taken in November and will give that to the inlaws and outlaws as our Christmas gift to them.

Oh, and I always watch A Christmas Story with Ralphie!

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot, there's a little town near here that has a weekend Christmas festival. The town is filled with antiques shops and has a great used book store. We go down there because they offer horse-drawn wagon rides, which the children love, and they have Santa Claus at the fire station and we take pictures of the children with Santa there. They have hot food at the Congregational Church in that town and it is GOOD, so we usually have lunch there. We also buy a handmade tree ornament while we're there.

There is a large park nearby that puts up over a million lights each year and has hot chocolate and cookies in one of the cabins. My dad always volunteers to pass out refreshments and we usually go up there on the day he's volunteering. However, this year it looks like the park won't be open. The Hurrican Ike winds that ravaged this area in September have downed hundreds of trees in the park and there are many more damaged branches in the trees. The park caretakers fear that loose branches could fall on people and hurt them.

Can't remember anything else off the top of my hat.

Of course, we have to go to the inlaws' home and eat my MIL's cooking!

StAnn

BTW, I already have over half of my Christmas Cards ready to go. How about y'all?

StAnn

What is your family's favorite Christmas tradition?

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