Now that I have a son, I need to think long and hard about establishing holiday traditions for him. Growing up as the oldest of four children, and an only child for the first five years, there were a lot of things my parents did around Christmas to get me and my siblings excited for the holiday. In no particular order, here’s a list of things we did for Christmas:
- Paper chains. We’d make them from red and green construction paper and use an old greeting card to hold them. I don’t remember if we started at Thanksgiving or December 1, but each night before going to bed we’d remove another link from the chain. When the last link was gone we’d know Santa was coming.
- Sugar cookies. Santa needs cookies and milk to keep him fueled for gift delivery around the world. We’d always bake sugar cookies and decorate them with colored sugar. We used a variety of cookie cutters (I have those same cookie cutters in my house now) and colors to make our own special cookies. Some we’d eat and some we’d save for Santa.
- Santa Claus. Yes, Santa did visit us. We never knew how Santa managed to get so many things for us that our parents would NEVER allow in our house. Santa brought me my first Cabbage Patch Kid, my Nintendo Entertainment System and thousands of other gifts that couldn’t possibly have been from Mom and Dad. Santa even used different wrapping paper and handwriting on the gift tags.
- Christmas mass. We were raised Catholic and dressed up for Christmas mass each year. We were too young to go to midnight mass, but might have tried to stay up late for it a few years when we got older.
- Christmas Eve. This was always a big night for the family. We’d go to my maternal grandparents’ house for lots of food, gifts and laughter. I don’t know how we fit so many people in such a small house but it was always nice to see family, especially those relatives who lived far away and would make the trip out each year.
- Christmas stockings. In addition to all the gifts Santa would leave under the tree he’d leave us each a stocking filled will little doodads unique to each of us. Mine usually contained a deck of Boston Red Sox baseball cards, writing paper and stickers and postage stamps. Our house rule was that we had to wait for everyone to be up before opening the gifts under the tree but we had free reign to open our stockings whenever we wanted. There were many Christmas mornings that our stockings were unwrapped at 3 a.m.
- Christmas pajamas. This was just for my mother, sisters and me but every year we’d have matching PJs to wear on Christmas Eve and we’d all be wearing them Christmas morning while we exchanged the gifts from under the tree.
- Ornaments. We all had special ornaments that we’d each put on the Christmas tree. We had communal ornaments that anyone could hang, but there were some ornaments that could only be hung by its owner. Mine is a little red rocking horse that my maternal grandparents bought for me when I was 3. It’s seen better days, but 27 years later and that ornament is still hung on the tree. We’d also each get an ornament every Christmas. When we grew up and moved out of the house, our ornament box came with us.
For the first time in a few years, we’re all going to be together for Christmas. I bought PJs for me, Mom and my sisters. I’ve been looking for stocking stuffers. I used the charity gift wrap station at the mall to wrap my son’s presents from Santa so that the wrapping paper wouldn’t be the same. I’m not sure which traditions we’ll manage to keep or any we’ll make on our own but it’s fun to be nostalgic as I think about the future.
What are your holiday traditions? If you don’t celebrate Christmas or get visits from Santa, what winter holidays do you celebrate?
