“When We Were Little” Wednesday: Christmas Edition

When I was little, there was no shortage of Christmas tradition in my family. We were – and are – a very tradition-oriented family, and the idea of changing things is met with a considerable amount of resistance. Because it will take a year and a half to write every one of them out in paragraph form, I’m going to resort to a good old-fashioned list. And please, don’t assume this is an exhaustive list. This is just what I’m thinking of right this second. I’m sure more will come to mind over the next day or so.

1 – Church on Christmas Eve. Always. Silent Night and candlelight and the whole shebang. For whatever reason, we would always dress up more, it seems like, for the Christmas Eve service than we did for Sunday mornings and this, for me, has carried over into adulthood. I always feel like I should dress up on Christmas Eve, even though my Sunday morning look is very casual. Leah, I’m sure, will be quite spiffy, too.

2 - “Fancy foods” for supper on Christmas Eve. Our fancy foods weren’t *really* all that fancy – they were finger foods like crackers and beef stick and cheese ball and shrimp cocktail and fruit platters – but that’s what we called it. Everyone would gather at the house after church and we’d all eat the “fancy foods” around the Christmas tree before playing some Christmas-themed games and singing Christmas carols as Dad played the piano. While we were all gathered there, we would take a family picture by the tree.

3 – “’Twas the Night Before Christmas,” read by my dad to anyone who will listen. It used to be my sisters and me, with the adults looking on, but now it’s the granddaughters who are the main audience. This is one of my favorite pictures ever:

4 - “Christmas Gift!” This, probably, is the silliest tradition my family has. We’ve always, always done it…to the point that several people claim the origins of the tradition to be different things. I won’t take sides and give credit to anyone, though. Basically, the tradition goes something like this: The first time you see anyone on Christmas morning, you shout, “Christmas gift!” at them. In the beginnings of this tradition, back in the Great Depression (I told you it’s been around a long time!), the person to whom “Christmas gift” was called had to give up a Christmas gift which, at that time, was quite the simple pleasure. Now, though, we don’t give our gifts away….but we do still holler at each other. It’s just what we do, and it’s absolutely hilarious to introduce new people to the tradition. You should have seen Scott’s face the first Christmas he spent with my family. He knew from minute one that it was going to be a weird day…and actually, that any time he spent with me would be weird.

5 – Opening one gift at a time. My dad plays Santa on Christmas morning (and sometimes even wears a Santa hat), and he distributes the gifts one at a time to each of us. The first round is front youngest to oldest, and the last round is from oldest to youngest. Everything in between has little rhyme or reason, but it takes a really, really long time as we all watch everyone open gifts and check out what everyone receives. We all have “our seats,” too, where we sit every year. Gift-opening at our house easily takes several hours, which is why…

6 – …we take a breakfast break in the middle. Sausage biscuits have been on the menu since I can remember, and cinnamon rolls have been added in recent years. Yummy.

7 – Stockings. We usually save the stockings for Christmas night, after we’ve all had a snack of Christmas dinner leftovers and have napped and played games and are pretty delirious from Christmas merriment. The stockings, I think, are my favorite part.

I’m sure there are more, but I think you get the idea. Christmas is a fabulous time in my family, and the traditions make it so much of what it is. Some traditions have been changed or tweaked as the years have gone on, and some have been added in more recent years, but the same idea is there, and it’s still fun for everyone.