A Holiday Tradition

As a child I don't particularly remember a lot of family traditions. I'm not sure we had a dedicated "get out the tree and decorate it" day but we did always get together with family. And since my mom lived about 6 hours away from her sister we'd alternate traveling, one year we'd go there and the next they'd come to us. I do recall my mom cooking on those years we'd have family visit us. She'd make a pot of chili so that when they all arrived they could enjoy a warm meal. She'd always spend her time baking different treats that we'd munch on through out the holidays.

When it came to presents, there was always one present my cousin and I would open on Christmas Eve. It was from an Aunt of ours that lived several states over. We rarely saw them and even though the present was never anything I was dying to have, it was still a present and still so cool to have the chance to open one.

The next day, Christmas morning, the kids would jump up to race to the living room to find the toys Santa had left. These toys were never wrapped, like I've heard of Santa doing at other homes. I think honestly our parents wanted to sleep in so they threw some stuff out on the couch to keep us all occupied for the next several hours or at least until it was a decent time to wake up and get moving.

And when it came to actually opening up the presents we always had someone who was in charge of passing out gifts, which also fell to the kids running them over to the adults, throwing them at their feet, and going back for more. Once the gifts were passed out, it was a free for all! We tore into them, yelling out "Thank you's" as we ripped into our next one. It was probably over in 10 to 15 minutes but what a rush it was.

My own traditions don't fall too far from the tree, Santa still brings upwrapped gifts, we open presents early in the morning but now we seem to have more families and more houses to make our way to. We don't always get together like in the past and it's certainly changed a bit since my mom and grandparents are now gone but with time comes changes and our families have grown and gained even more members along the way. :)

I hope my kids take a moment and enjoy the traditions we've started and carry on. I hope one day the things we do today will mesh into their own adult lives and be recreated to form their own traditions. Til then, I'll continue to enjoy the time I have with young kids {and one adult son :)} and we'll continue to create even more holiday fun together.


Thanks to The Blog Dare December 2011 Prompts for inspiring this blog post.

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