Traditions

               Every year my family has certain traditions of getting and decorating a Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving. We also make cookies every year. One tradition that goes along with decorating the tree is we have a wish ornament. Every year for the past 5 years my family and I sit down at the table and we are all given tiny sheets to write down what we wish Santa will get us this year. When we are all done with ours we out it in the ornament. Then we take out the past years and read them aloud and see if our wishes had come true.

               Another tradition that we have is decorating the kid’s tree as we call it. It is a tree that we have in our dining room/piano room. Every year since we are born we get an ornament for Christmas. (We also get a few from relatives). So we decorate a certain tree with our ornaments. This year we are going to have to get a bigger tree because we have over 70 ornaments. We take a full night to decorate the tree, while drinking hot cocoa or apple cider.

               Another tradition we have is every Christmas Eve we celebrate by open two gifts, our ornament gift and our PJ’s that we pick out special for that year. Then we all change into the pajamas. Then we sit in front of the tree and take a photo for the scrapbook. After that we sit down with the treats that my family has made including a cheese ball dip with crackers, cookies, salami and crackers, and a few other things. For drinks we have hot cocoa and apple cider. Then once we are all settled in we watch Christmas Vacation. (Even though I have seen this movie a billion times it never gets old). Once the movie is over we all go up to bed and wait for Santa to come.

               In the morning on Christmas day my brother and I are the first to wake up at 3-4 am. (I have tried to sleep in later but it never works) Then it is my littlest sister Ella. Since we are so loud, my mom and grandma will come down telling us to be quiet. After a while my grandpa will get up and get ready, knowing that the bathrooms will be hogged later. My sister Anna comes down with my dad a few minutes later. We can finally dig into the gifts that have been tempting my siblings and I for so long. When we open presents we go from youngest to oldest one at a time so that we can each see what everyone else has gotten too. One of the last gifts that we open up are the Secret Santa gifts. Since my mom didn’t want us to spend all of our/her money we do a Secret Santa.

               What are your traditions that you do with your family? Do you want to start any new traditions? If so let me know what they are. Thanks Emily.