Christmas Traditions

In my family, Christmas is all about traditions. We have so many. My little sister and I definitely try and see to it that they all get celebrated each year. As we get older, we get more and more adamant about making and seeing through all of our traditions. Here are ours for the Christmas season:

The day after Thanksgiving: We decorate for Christmas. The last few years we've had Kayla, my sister's boyfriend and my sister's friend and boyfriend. We all help put up the tree, put the ornaments on, and everything. After, we eat pizza my dad made. This year, we played Apples to Apples after. And then, we watched Elf, which is what we usually do when we decorate for Christmas.

After Second Semester: This year Kayla and I went to a place near our hometown called Zootastic. There was over 4 million lights, animals we get to pet, and you can feed tigers! Also, you get an opportunity to take a picture with Santa and a tiger cub! So we did that, and we've talked about making it a new tradition to go there and get our picture taken with Santa and the tiger cub! Here's the picture we took this year, I love it!

Christmas Eve: Christmas Eve we have so many traditions! During the day, we don't really do anything. My parents have worked the past few years. My sister and I just lay around watching Christmas movies, and getting ready.

We go to our Christmas Eve church service at 6 PM. Usually they have so many things like carriage rides, food, drinks, and so much more so it takes an hour to two hours. Then we go to Lodestar for dinner. That started about 5 years ago when my grandpa was still alive and we couldn't figure out what we wanted to eat and he suggested that, so we have gone there ever since.

After dinner, we come home and my parents gives us one present. It's ALWAYS Christmas pajamas. We change into our Christmas pajamas and my sister and I start making cookies for "Santa", (or really ourselves) and some hot chocolate. We used to track Santa on some website, but obviously we don't anymore!

We always watch National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. Our whole family LOVES it! It's so funny and by now, we can quote almost all of the words. After the movie we usually turn on the news a little bit to see where "Santa" is. Then each year we take turns reading the "Night Before Christmas". Then we turn on what ever Christmas movie is playing until we get tired and go to sleep. My sister sleeps with me every year. I can't even remember when this started, but we can't stop now!

Christmas: On Christmas we wake up SO early. My mom is just as excited as we are, so she wakes up pretty shortly after us. Eventually my dad wakes up and we go downstairs and we start to open presents. After all of that, we fix breakfast and eat. Then my sister and I start to look at our new stuff in depth and play with any new games or things that are interactive.

After that, we start to make our lunch/dinner spread of food. We always have SO much food. Way too much to list here but here's a little taste: sausage and cheese meatballs, cheeseballs, cookies, biscotti, lunch meat and cheese for sandwiches and so much more. This is when my grandparents and some family friends come over for Christmas and we exchange gifts, eat and just hang out! Christmas day we really just be lazy and hang out with family.

Let me know your Christmas traditions! I love to hear about everyone's traditions!