Favorite Holiday Traditions

December 20, 2017

Favorite Holiday Traditions

Christmas is definitely family time, and family time usually means some sort of traditions. My family has some pretty typical traditions and maybe some that are just our own.

My personal favorite is our Christmas Eve breakfast. We've done this one for as long as I can remember, and we do it with my mom's ENTIRE side of the family. Let me put this into perspective... My mom has nine siblings (including her). This means that I have around thirty cousins (not including my own siblings. AND... some of those cousins are now having kids of their own. Needless to say, this is quite an event. In times past, we got together at restaurants for the breakfast, but as our family grew we finally started having it at my aunt's houses. I have 3-4 aunts that have houses big enough to host us all. So on Christmas Eve morning, we all get together and have a giant breakfast. We are all assigned different food items to bring. Breakfast foods are my favorite so that just adds to my excitement. This is one of the only times that my entire family still gets together, so it's something that I really cherish.

Another tradition of ours is Christmas pajama's. I know that this one is pretty common. On Christmas Eve we open one present and it's always pajamas. Growing up, after we all got in our pajamas, we would watch It's a Wonderful Life as a family. Now that I'm older and am starting my own traditions, we changed that slightly. We still do pajamas, but now Mike & I pick a Christmas episode from each of our favorite TV shows and watch those - mine is usually either Glee or Gossip Girl and Mike's is usually How I Met Your Mother. It's a Wonderful Life is a great movie, but I also find it kind of depressing (I know that's slightly the point of the movie but still) so we changed that up.

Some other smaller traditions that we aren't always the best at doing include: seeing the lights at Temple Square, watching White Christmas at least once during the holiday season, making holiday treats (my favorites are Revel Bars, Dipped Pretzels, Trix Treat, & Toffee), & eating sugar cereal for breakfast on Christmas Day (my family rarely ate sugar cereal growing up so this was a huge treat).

As Mike & I are growing together and will eventually have kids, we are coming up with our own traditions that we want to start. Because of this, I LOVE hearing other people's holiday traditions. What are some of your favorite things to do around this time of year?