{Christmas Memory Encore} Christmas Day Traditions

Originally Posted December 24, 2007

It’s Christmas Eve and I’m up. I’m like a little kid. Always have been.

I’m still at my parents but they’re all sleeping.

Santa started his trek across the country a while ago and I just checked and he’s in Fugi, Japan.

I didn’t write much this weekend simply because I took some time off. I wasn’t planning on stopping my life for three days, but I did. It was so nice to just enjoy my family and my kids.

And it was nice to create some new memories as well as recount the old ones.

Christmas morning is a ritual in our house. There’s a process and a system. And yes, it’s how it was done at our house growing up. Some things never change, and not because it’s the way of the world, but because it works that way. Why change it?

I’m the first person to wake up Christmas morning. I always have been and even now, at 30, I’m still the first one to wake up. Matthew’s never far behind me and normally the two of us have to go wake Sam up. We can’t wait until 9 when she gets up, but we do have a rule that no one can wake anyone else up before 7. This rule was instated when I was in the second grade when I got up at 4 because I though the porch light outside at my neighbor’s was the sun.

Apparently, I had just missed Santa and would’ve ruined everything.

So once I get up I go out to see if Santa came. It’s silly really, because I put everything out there. But there’s something about waking up and seeing all those presents under the tree.

Now, one thing about our house Christmas morning. There are piles of presents… in our case, there will be 3… one for me, one for Matt and one for Sam. Each pile is wrapped in one kind of wrapping paper, but the kids don’t know who’s pile is who’s because there are no names on the packages. They know which one is mine, because it’s the smallest but as for theirs? They have no clue.

We grab some of our breakfast casserole and I put the coffee on and grab the camera. Then we get into the stockings… this is when they learn which pile is theirs… based on the gifts in their stockings and which kind of paper it’s wrapped in.

There are an equal amount of presents in the stocking as there are under the tree… it prevents fighting and it makes the morning go a lot smoother.

And then with opening presents, we have a system.

The person who finds the glass pickle on the tree is the one who gets to open their present first. And we take turns. We do this for two reasons… (a) we all get to see what the other person got and (b) it makes Christmas morning last a little longer. My mother started this because there were some Christmas’s that there just wasn’t a whole lot under the tree… so this drew it out and I do it with my kids too.

So we take turns and I skip a few rounds here and there, but in the end, we all finish at the same time, we all got to see what the other one opened and we’re opening presents for at least an hour, maybe longer. I hate for something to fly by that you’ve put so much time into.

And then? When it’s all done? We call all the grandparents and my brother to wish them a merry Christmas and recount what we’ve gotten and then we play. We play all day. Sometimes we don’t even get dressed, but if we do, we wear something new that we’ve just gotten.

This year, the kids will go to their dad’s for a little bit, so I’m not sure what I’ll get into but I’m sure I’ll find something. Maybe I’ll clean up since my parents are going to stop by on Wednesday on their way to Pennsylvania… or maybe I’ll start packing for Florida. I’ll find something.

But Christmas lasts as long as it possibly can at our house… I make sure of that!

But now, it’s time to pack up the laptop and the rest of our stuff and make that 6 hour trip home so that we can begin our traditions of Christmas Eve.

I’ll leave you with a few pictures of mom and dad’s…

(click to make them bigger)

Samara helping peel potatoes…

Dad teaching Matthew how to carve a turkey

The fish decked out for Christmas

The sheep on steroids (I posted about this earlier)

Our stockings…

Me and my weedwacker…

Papaw and his honeypot…

Just for the record, I’ve learned something while I’ve been here…Christmas isn’t always going to be this fun and my kids aren’t always going to be this small. I’ve throughly enjoyed my kids and my parents this trip… I can’t tell you the last time I said that. It’s been the greatest Christmas gift of all.

Until next time…