Holidays are a mixture of nostalgia from traditions and excitement by creating new rituals. Something I have loved over the past few years is melding my childhood traditions with my husbands' to form our own Christmas traditions together.
Growing up I had never heard of Santa until I was in kindergarten and my classmates told me about him. I then went home and my parents flat out told me that he was just a lie parents told their kids and my parents didn't want to lie to us! It's pretty funny to me as I look back on it. I don't have a problem with people believing in Santa, but I also respect my parents' reasoning behind not telling us stories like that. My husband's family, however, is very much all about Santa Clause. Even to this day my mother in law still won't admit Santa isn't real, which I think is the sweetest thing! She's even got me believing now!
It's cool to see the differences and similarities we share when it comes to holiday traditions! For me and my siblings, the holidays were full of baking cookies and buckeyes with my mom and grandma. Opening one gift on Christmas Eve and walking through Winterhaven (this is a Tucson thing If you know you know). My mom gave my sister and me spots in the house to decorate for Christmas, which may be why I have such a love for it now! I love all these traditions because they have created so many memories over the years.
I have loved getting to be a part of Nick's family's traditions as well, like joining them on Christmas morning and going to Christmas shows at the Gas Light Theatre. Gaining new traditions and a new family has been such a blessing!
Sometimes as things change so do traditions. For instance, this year not all traditions are able to keep going. I think this can be sad, but it can also be looked at as an opportunity to create new traditions. This year I won't be around to help my mom bake cookies before Christmas, but she is going to bake them beforehand and leave them to be frosted when I am in town. Just because it isn't the exact same thing we usually do, doesn't mean the tradition has to die. It can be adjusted and kept alive to create even more precious memories.
A new tradition my husband and I have is that we wait till December 1st to do any Christmas-related things. So yesterday being the 1st, we bought a REAL Christmas tree and decorated our apartment! I also wrapped a few gifts I've hiding under my bed.
I hope you enjoyed hearing about some of my traditions, both new and old. Maybe it got you thinking about all your family traditions or maybe even rituals you'd like to add to your holidays. Comment and tell me what you do for Christmas and the special traditions you have during this season!
I love that! We do the circle thing where we open one gift at a time too! Thanks for sharing, I love to see what other people do❤️
One of our traditions that shock a lot of people is that we open all of our gifts on Christmas eve. When we were young Santa would still bring a handful of gifts Christmas morning but all of our family gifts (at least on my moms side) are opened Christmas eve. And we buy A LOT of gifts 😬. We also have a system where we all sit in a circle after the gifts have been sorted and we take turns one by one opening a gift until they are all gone so it is always an all evening type of thing.
We're a little bit different but I love our Christmas traditions
🎄❤🎅❤🎁