Friday, December 11, 2009

Christmas is coming . . . traditions?

Christmas is one of my favorite holidays. Always has been. It has always been one of my favorite times spent with my family. We have created our share of unique Christmas traditions over the years. Everything from seeing how many puzzles we can do in our days together, to our version of Christmas Eve dinner, and one of my all time favorites "Christmas Crunch".

This year is going to be different. For the first time in my life I won't be having Christmas with my family in Meridian. We will be spending Christmas with Eric's family in Nebraska. While I am excited to spend some time with them and get to know them better, I will miss my family terribly and our funny Christmas traditions.

But this has got me thinking about Eric and I creating some Christmas traditions of our own. This being our first Christmas together I don't really know where to start. I have all my Christmas shopping done and Eric is almost done with his. Shopping together has been fun, interesting, but fun. Eric put up lights on the house, the decorations are put up all over, gifts are wrapped under the tree, so it seems like we are pretty much ready. Only a couple things left to do.

All I have left to ask is what kind of traditions do we want to have in our new family. I realize traditions tend to create themselves so we'll have to see what happens. My question for you is, what is your favorite Christmas Tradition?

4 comments:

Rebekah said...

I completely understand. The year Lars and I were married was my first holiday season without my family and we were living with his mom and she NEVER decorates for the holidays anymore, so we had no tree, no stockings, and no Christmas dinner.

But his extended family did do Christmas Eve dinner and gifts for the younger cousins.

My favorite tradition that the Clawsons picked up when my Dad married Cherie was the Christmas Eve pjs. The newest tradition that I have with my husband is his family makes tamales. We're still figuring out our tradtions, too since it's only been 3 years. The most important part of Chirstmas is being with the one you love th most- and that I imagine would be Eric. =)

Jenn Hansen said...

You'll figure it all out. Just decide what traditions are most important to you. This year we are starting some new ones of our own and we have taken some from our family and some from Tyson's family.

I think that my new favorite tradition will be one that we are starting this yet. I got a Christmas story book and Lily will get to open that on Christmas Eve with her jammies and ornament and that will be her bedtime story that night. Every year we'll get a new one.

I love reading bedtime stories and I am so excited to get this going.

Perplexio said...

I hope you don't mind my stumbling upon your blog. I was browsing fellow bloggers in Aurora, IL and found yours.

This will be the 7th Christmas together for my wife & I (including 2 Christmases together before we were married) and our first with a little one.

We've started to develop our own traditions and started incorporating traditions from our respective families into our traditions. This Christmas Eve we'll be having lasagna for dinner (my family used to do lasagna for dinner on the 26th. After all my siblings did Christmas with their families, they'd come home on the 26th for lasagna and then we'd open more presents. My wife & I are just moving the lasagna tradition from 12/26 to 12/24 and scaling it back a bit). Another tradition I started last year was making sausage bread. Our daughter's Godfather loved it so it's becoming an annual tradition. We used to catch a Christmas eve movie with my in-laws but with a 6 month old that's not feasible this year. The other tradition that was started last year-- on New Year's Day we get together with some friends of ours. They have kids and we have kids now so we don't like to drive on New Year's Eve and neither do they. We get together on New Year's Day and watch the NHL Winter Classic on NBC. This year I believe it's either Boston vs. Washington or Boston vs. Philadelphia at Fenway Park-- not quite as exciting as last year's Red Wings/Blackhawks game at Wrigley but still enjoyable.

Chaz and Ali said...

My favorite tradition is that my sister comes home and has Christmas with her family! But I guess it can wait till next year and we can share with the inlaws! Hope you have an amazing Christmas Liz, and make sure you take some Christmas Crunch with you! It wouldn't be Christmas without it! Love you!