Christina from An Unspoken Story asked that we share some of our Christmas Traditions. I shared some of these last year but thought it would be fun to share again.
One of our favorite traditions is an idea I read about in a magazine when my kids were young. It is to label the gifts with a false name. We have never had Santa bring the kids presents. Neither Bob's family or mine did that so we never started. Our presents go under the tree once they are wrapped and when the kids were young they would inspect them and could often figure out what they were. When they didn't know whose was whose, it wasn't so easy to figure out. The hard thing is often finding names to use. A few examples of names we used are: Snap, Crackle and Pop; Frosty, Grinch and Rudolph; Dasher, Dancer, Prancer. When it is time to open gifts they have to guess who each person is. You wouldn't believe the reasons they would come up with as to why they think a name fits.
One of our food traditions is making a fudge recipe from Bob's Grandma. It's the old fashioned style hard fudge. My family (especially Bob) thinks we "need" this for Christmas. I had to watch his Mom make this to learn it myself and I usually have a flopped batch every year because it's such a picky recipe but it is good!
One of our favorite traditions is an idea I read about in a magazine when my kids were young. It is to label the gifts with a false name. We have never had Santa bring the kids presents. Neither Bob's family or mine did that so we never started. Our presents go under the tree once they are wrapped and when the kids were young they would inspect them and could often figure out what they were. When they didn't know whose was whose, it wasn't so easy to figure out. The hard thing is often finding names to use. A few examples of names we used are: Snap, Crackle and Pop; Frosty, Grinch and Rudolph; Dasher, Dancer, Prancer. When it is time to open gifts they have to guess who each person is. You wouldn't believe the reasons they would come up with as to why they think a name fits.
One of our food traditions is making a fudge recipe from Bob's Grandma. It's the old fashioned style hard fudge. My family (especially Bob) thinks we "need" this for Christmas. I had to watch his Mom make this to learn it myself and I usually have a flopped batch every year because it's such a picky recipe but it is good!
Another thing we do is have our family Christmas time and opening of gifts on Christmas Eve. On Christmas day, we alternate between spending the day with either Bob's family or mine. Before opening gifts we always read the Christmas story from Luke 2. Although it's familiar, it's a good reminder of what Christmas is really about.
Something my kids would tell you is a tradition is the house cleaning on Christmas Eve. I like to have everything picked up and put away before opening presents. They thought I was far too picky and would never be satisfied, but who wants to clean up afterward?
Those are a few of our traditions. What do you do at your house?
