Merry (belated) Christmas! I had a great Christmas with my family as usual (to say otherwise when we were all in attendance and in good health seems wrong somehow). Since I no longer live at home, I’m trying to determine what my own traditions will be. If we base it on this year, it involves baking and eating a lot of sugar cookies, shortbread and gingerbread (both in raw and baked form). I still dream of the day when I’ll start the baking early enough that it can serve as gifts for people.

The other tradition I wanted to start is one where my sister will sleep over at my place on Christmas Eve, and we’ll head over to my parents place on Christmas Day. Our church holds a Christmas Eve service that is usually over by 8:30pm, so the plan was we’d head over to my place and watch movies and hang out. We ended up going to my parents’ place before heading to my place, and for one reason or another we didn’t arrive at my place until after 1 o’clock in the morning. We proceeded to talk for several hours before retiring well into Christmas morning.

Our family tried doing a Secret Santa gift exchange for the first time, one where each person selects a name and buys for that one person. Since some family members didn’t like not being able to buy gifts for others, people who wanted to could buy (smaller) gifts for other people they wanted to buy for. It worked out fairly well despite all the complaints I heard prior to Christmas Day (regarding why it had to be a secret Santa, not wanting to buy for the person they had selected, etc). I was the only one who was genuinely surprised by the person who had chosen my name (brother #1).

There were some unexpected tears: a particularly heartwarming moment between Brother #1 and my sister cued the waterworks (as Brother #1 is fond of saying), and each of us received a piece of artwork from an acquaintance of my mom’s. She (acquaintance) has fibromyalgia, which leaves her in pain a large part of the time but she uses her artwork to distract her from the physical pain. Each year she selects ten people to make artwork for and this year our family was among that number. The card and note she included with the gift was very touching, and we were all moved.

We don’t get up early to open gifts anymore, now that my siblings are men, so it was around midday by the time we were finished with the gift opening. I took a nap because I knew I’d have to rest up for Boxing Day…more on that later. But back to the idea of Christmas traditions, what are some things that must happen or be done for it to feel like Christmas to you?

Filed under: Celebrations, Family by jummy