Christmas Traditions

[Thuja 3,658]

With my family, we tended to get joke gifts or bad gifts.  I remember this one time my mum bought a massive storage container and a bunch of smaller upon smaller boxes, wrapped them all and put them in each other.  It was pretty funny watching my brother open box after box to reveal a small gift card with a card.  Or maybe buy something someone didn't want and you have to fake it well enough so people think you actually wanted that present.  I don't know what I'm going to do this year though, probably nothing.

[Puddle Duck 142]

When I was a kid (12 and under in this case) my mom went all out with decorations in every room and a wreath on the front door as soon as Thanksgiving was over. She would surprise my brother and I with a new ornament and we'd put the tree up. After that she would bake all sorts of cookies and make candies.

My brother and I would get new pajamas to wear and on Christmas morning we'd be up with the sun to open presents. This usually resulted in her grumpily telling us to go back to bed. Around 10 am she'd come out and make hot chocolate for me and hot strawberry for my brother and load them up with marshmallows. While she did that her boyfriend lit a fire and we'd sit in front of it. We were handed our stockings first that were stuffed to bursting with sweets and small gifts. Then we'd open the rest.

Later in the day our grandma, older brother, cousins, aunts, uncles, etc would all come around for dinner. All the females cooked while all the males watched sports (that always annoyed me a good bit especially since they didn't have to help with clean up either). Then there would be more gifts. My dad would come to take my brother and I home after everyone else had left which was usually around 9pm.

Dad didn't have a lot of money being a single father of 2 without any form of child support so Christmas was always tight at home. We always had a tree and a Christmas carousel even if we didn't have anything else, but he always tried to make Christmas special.

The things I really missed when I had my first Christmas away from family was the stocking my mom always set up and the Christmas carousel my dad would put out. I still have yet to wake up to my stocking stuffed with sweets, but my husband and best friend went in together a few years back to buy me the Christmas carousel from my childhood. I ended up crying so much. XD

My husband buys me a new ornament every year since my mom never sent mine. After we got married we started a new tradition of buying a special ornament that we write the year on. He also reminds me to write a list for Santa and every year there is a present under the tree that says, "From Santa."

Edited December 21, 2016 by Puddle Duck

[EpicEnergy 22,155]

Me and my family always go to go a place where there are a ton of Christmas lights sometime in December as a tradition.

[Splashee 28,537]

Traditions are important, to keep families together. But when you don't have a working family, it is just nice to skip things like Christmas and just play video games instead, create your own traditions! Me and my brother had at least one Christmas just playing Xbox and eating gingerbread