Holiday Traditions

I decided to work for a school district instead of somewhere else because of the idea that I could have not one, but TWO, weeks off every winter.   Two whole weeks of no work!  No waking up at an ungodly hour!  No obnoxious phone calls!  And most importantly, no long and boring meetings! 

When I was single, I spent most of this time sleeping in and being incredibly unproductive.  Now that I am married and a parent, I don't sleep as much, but our inviolate rule of what has come to be called Winter Break(as opposed to the former "guaranteed to start a big, useless, argument" Christmas Vacation) is that we do what we feel like doing, as much as possible.  If this means hanging out in our jammies and playing video games all day long, eating junk food and ignoring our vegetables, so be it.

Oh, we don't ignore the important things, like attending services on Christmas Eve, or spending time with our families.  Although my family is not what you call "touchy-feely", we do try to spend time together.  We usually exchange gifts with my parents, my mother-in-law and my brother's family on Christmas Eve, right after church.  We also gather together at some point on Christmas day, to feast and laugh and watch some form of sports.

The three of us, however, have created our own traditions.  Kids make it impossible not to have traditions, since they demand that everything be done just like it was last year, and the year before that, and the year before that.  We want to avoid the meltdowns, so Larry and I tend to give in to our little one at this time of the year, in the name of tradition.  Besides, we like them as well.

One of our traditions over the holiday break is to watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy each year.  The extended cuts, not the silly ones that were shown in the theater are viewed, because we are hardcore about our movie watching.  This year we also included The Hobbit movies, and we wandered down to our local theater to see the last installment.  Our movie viewing is immediately followed by the "Obscure questions about Tolkien's works that only my husband can answer" portion of the evening.  My son peppers his father with questions about the characters, and my husband loves it.  I pepper Larry with questions regarding Tolkien's issues with women, and my husband doesn't love it as much, but he is at least patient. 

Another tradition?  After my son has gone to bed on Christmas Eve, Larry and I watch Die Hard together while we finish setting things up for the morning.  We share some wine as John McClane smacks some terrorists around and trades one liners with Hans Gruber.  It is a defense mechanism; by the time Christmas Eve rolls around, we are extremely tired of the whole commercialized aspect of Christmas.  We need a break, and Die Hard provides such, with explosions and bullets and bad guys getting their comeuppance. 

A third tradition is breakfast on Christmas morning.   The heavenly scent of cinnamon rolls wafts through the house at the crack of dawn, soon after we wake up.  The frenzy of opening gifts builds up an appetite, but we certainly do not want to ruin Christmas dinner by filling our bellies too early.  Cinnamon rolls seem to fit the bill, and I usually make plenty, so that there's a couple of rolls left over for snacking in between breakfast and lunch. 

What sort of holiday traditions do you and your family have?  And while I'm at it, I would like to wish you and your families a wonderful holiday filled with love and laughter and lots of goodness, whatever your traditions may be. 

Traditions--All About Family

This was the very first year that my husband and Zane and I finally got to have Christmas together, just us. So I wanted to start some traditions that Zane could grow up with and carry on to his own family one day.

We had the Christmas stockings, a tradition started by Larry. I added to this tradition by incorporating the treats from Germany that I used to get for Dec. 6th, St. Nicklaus day, and putting those into Zane's stocking.

Next year we will have the Advent Calendar, to help Zane count the days until Christmas. Nothing helps your counting skills like chocolate.

We did the Christmas lights drive-bys, a tradition started by Zane this year so he could see the lights, and a tradition we will continue at least until Zane is a surly teenager. Then we will still do it just to bug him.

We did the Santa visit, because we wanted blackmail photos for Zane's dating years.

We did watch A Christmas Story at least twice, which is MY tradition, because that is the very best Christmas movie ever.

We also watched Die Hard for the first time after Zane was asleep, and this will be a new tradition. Die Hard is the second very best Christmas movie ever, especially if you like a few explosions with your glass of wine. (And we do!)

The presents from Santa are never wrapped because Santa is a busy man and paper is too expensive for the North Pole to foot the costs. There's no trees up there, and importing isn't cheap!

Mom is automatically the person who picks up all the wrapping paper, according to Zane. Dad is automatically the guy who has to film every second, according to Mom.

And apparently Zane is the only one allowed to open all the presents in the house, no matter what name is on the label.

Merry Christmas to all. And if you don't celebrate Christmas, Happy Holidays, whatever they are. No matter the name of the day, or the name of your religion, it's all about family, traditions, and most especially, love.