This December has been a little, well, crazy at my house. We’ve had a lot of stuff going on, most of it difficult. So, I’ve had to take a little step back from blogging to focus on my family. However, with Christmas only two days away, I wanted to take a minute to talk about our holiday traditions. To me, a tradition is something that brings back happy memories. Like for me, the Christmas season always meant making perogies with my nana. To this day, whenever I see a perogi, I automatically think about those times and it makes me smile.
We have a few, simple, traditions in our family. Our Christmas tree is always topped with a light up star. The story behind the star is that my husband and I got it from Walmart for about $10 for our very first Christmas together. That was almost 20 years ago, and it’s still shining. Looking at it takes me back to our early years together in our little apartment when we first dreaming up life together.
Another tradition we have is our Advent house. My mom used to work at Cracker Barrel and she’s given me a ton of Christmas decorations from there over the years. This one is cool, it has 24 little doors for the countdown to Christmas, and when you open them, it lights up and plays Christmas carols. Since my boys were little, they’ve loved doing the “Christmas door”. Every year they switch off for who opens the even days and who opens the odd days. We fill the doors with mini-ornaments my mother in law got them to go on tiny trees they put in their room. It’s a nice way to celebrate the build up to Christmas day.
My kids also look forward to the annual trek to my in-laws to celebrate Christmas. My hubby’s job (being a firefighter) usually means that he works either Christmas Eve or Christmas day. So, we don’t travel on the actual holiday. Instead, we usually head up the week before on a couple days when he is off. While we’re there we play board games and build gingerbread houses. It doesn’t matter how they come out, it’s really just about spending time together.
These are just a few of our traditions, how does your family enjoy celebrating the season? I want to wish you and all of yours a Merry Christmas!