Cousin Matt tagged me weeks ago for this little meme, but I was in a busy stage and haven’t posted my part yet. So, before Christmas fades away from our memory and the new year sets in–I’ll share three Christmas traditions and pass along the invitation to any/all readers to post their own.
First
My family celebrates on Christmas Eve–always. Which means that I always count the days until Christmas to Christmas Eve. I forget that not everyone counts this way and get really confused when they say something like “Christmas is on a Thursday this year.” And they get really confused when I mention that I couldn’t have walked for my graduation on Saturday, December 22–since Christmas was the Monday following.
Second
My mom makes the most spectacular Christmas cookies–and she makes bunches of them. She freezes enough for each person to have two of each kind of cookie on Christmas Eve. And since she makes somewhere around a dozen varieties of Christmas cookies, that means that she sets out something around 200 cookies (2cookies_per_type_per_personx9personsx12types=216cookies) on Christmas Eve. Needless to say, we’re eating them well into the New Year!
Third
After our Christmas Eve revelries (an early dinner followed by Christmas Eve Services at church followed by much conversation followed by gifts), we generally all settle in for a movie or some games. And inevitably, we children are still up when Mom and Dad decide to go to bed. But since the stockings have yet to be stuffed–and Mom is the stuffer–it leaves us in something of a dilemma. Either Mom has to stay up until we’ve all gone to bed, or she has to wake up really early to stuff the stockings. When we were younger, Dad just ordered us to bed so that Mom could stuff stockings. In the past several years, Mom has risen early to stuff stockings. This year, she used a different approach. “Don’t look” she told us as she stuffed our stockings hanging in the next room over. “Now don’t get into them until tomorrow” she reminded us as she went off to bed. And we didn’t–or at least I didn’t.