Sunday Souvenir – Christmas Traditions

I grew up in a small family. It was just myself, my dad and my brother. While my mom passed away when I was 5, we continued to get together with her family over the holidays. We had a tradition of holding Christmas either at our house, my grandparents house in Iowa or my aunt’s house in Colorado. I think we sort of rotated through locations, but I’d guess more were at my grandparents house than the others. Later on (when I was in my teens) we switched to renting condos in Florida and having a tropical Christmas. We had extended family in the area and got to share Christmas dinner.

Because we were Christmas nomads so often, we didn’t have a ton of traditions. I liked going to the Christmas Eve church service so I could sing carols and ask far too many questions about the logistics of the whole nativity story. I also had a stretch of years where I insisted on only eating Christmas dinner with my left hand (I’m right-handed), because I’m strange, I guess!

One tradition I loved was stockings! They’d change based on whose house were were at (gift bags were used at the Florida condos) but they were always include an orange that would be added to Christmas breakfast. There were filled with candies and little wrapped gifts without to/from tags, that I suspect everyone contributed. I hang stockings for us every year, but they typically stay empty unless I put something in them. I plan to do some stocking stuffer shopping after all this reminiscing, but chances are mine will be empty come Christmas morning, heh.

Jax is still too young to understand the holiday, but I bet in the coming years we will start creating our own traditions.

Do you have any favorite traditions?