Holiday traditions are something that is very important to me, I think back fondly on my own family traditions growing up and wand my children to do the same. We are trying to create our own family identity and traditions but we tend to fall into our own childhood traditions depending on which family we are with. When we are with hubby’s family we do things the way hubby did them growing up and with my family we do things the way I did them growing up.
Because of this, I don’t really feel our family really has established our own traditions yet, we just fall into the habits we grew up with. It doesn’t help that this is the first year we’ve had Christmas in the same place with the same people as the year before. Honeybun’s first Christmas we were with Hubby’s family and her second we stayed in Florida with my family. Sugarplum’s first Christmas we were in Dublin with both of our families and her second we were in Colorado with my family. Last year and this year we’ve again stayed in Florida and celebrated with my family.
While we may have very few Christmas traditions of our own, these are the ones we DO have and that I hold dear:
- We take a family picture every year in our Christmas finest and I print them and each year put them all out
- Christmas is a 2 day holiday, starting with family time Christmas Eve, lasting through dinner Christmas day
- Growing up, we always got to open one small present on Christmas Eve and this is one tradition I have held onto for our children
- When at home, we have a “kids tree” which the girls decorate with plastic bobbles and wood ornaments and they can redecorate it as they want
- I get the kids special Christmas pajamas each year which they wear to bed and then have on for presents in the morning. I’ve loved being able to hand down Honeybun’s special Christmas jamas to Sugarplum and this year Doodle will get to wear the ones his sisters wore their first Christmas!
