I was sitting by the Christmas tree last night all lit up (in fact, this very tree you see pictured), and just thought about how much I love doing that. It’s one of my favorite things to do around Christmas, is listen to Christmas music and sit by the tree in the dark and just think. It’s always so beautiful and I feel so peaceful, like I took a minute to calm down and forget the busy-ness of this time of year and just enjoy.
One of my favorite Christmas traditions growing up was how, during the whole year, we’d all save our change and at the end of the year cash it in. We’d draw names as siblings and then use the money to go towards a present for the person whose name we had drawn. We’d open that present from each other on Christmas Eve. I think that it was great because with all the presents we’d get on Christmas, it kind of brought us siblings closer together, because Christmas Eve, that was all we opened so our present didn’t get lost in all the presents the next day. I loved it, and now Dillon and I thought we’d start that with our kids this year.
Another tradition I loved growing up was loading us all up in the car and driving around looking at Christmas lights around town. Dillon and I have also started doing that one.
A great thing my mom always made sure to do was the 12 days of Christmas for a different family in the ward each year. It was a lot of fun–she always made up great poems and it was so fun to ring the doorbell and run. When our kids get older and can run faster, we’ll definitely want to do this one!
We’re always on the look-out for another great tradition to start. I know that some of the best traditions are ones you don’t plan, but just happen. We’ve thought about the Festival of Trees just for the fact that they raise money for Primary Children’s Hospital! And now that we’ve been there getting their service, it’d mean a lot more to us to go. We did go last year, and Carson saw a commercial for it this year. And, like a guy, said, “I remember going there last year! The food was right over there!” But we missed it this year:(. Bummer.
What are some of your favorite Christmas traditions?
This post is so funny because Brad and I were just barely talking about how we feel like we don’t have very many fun Christmas traditions. We are also on the look out for fun things to do!
One of our favorite traditions we got from when we were SUPER poor college students. We both got $3 and would buy each other three things from the dollar store and put them in our stockings (bought from the dollar store of course). We opened them on Christmas Eve and it was fun getting silly little cheesy things to open. We are going to try and do this with the kids too so they can (hopefully) learn how fun it is to give to each other (without having to spend a ton of money).
Thanks for letting me share!