Traditions are a funny thing, they don’t exist until you decide to redo something you did the year before! I feel like traditions happen on accident most of the time, at least the ones my husband and I have created. Traditions are also passed down from family, and most of the time we don’t realize how they came to be, but we keep doing them because they provide us with fond memories. Traditions are a funny thing to me, and why do we choose to keep doing them, is interesting to think about.
Most of our Christmas traditions revolve around food, go figure, but there are some non eatable traditions we choose to do each year. First, at the beginning of December, I always bake a bunch of cookies. My favorite cookies were the Orange Spice Gingerbread Cookies! I made this year, which is odd because I normally don’t like gingerbread cookies. We also put up our tree at the beginning of December, but this year I kept my tree up all year, so we skipped this tradition. Through out December I also like to walk my dog at night around the neighborhood to look at all the light around my community. I also like going into NYC sometime in December, it is just magical to me and my favorite place to be. These are fun traditions, but sometimes we do not do them every year, traditions that we keep every year, start on Christmas Eve.
On Christmas Eve we tend to just relax, I always spend the day watching my favorite Christmas movies and make homemade hot chocolate (which is easier than you would think). My presents are normally all wrapped and under the tree days before Christmas, because Christmas Eve is reserved for relaxing and watching movies all day long. Some of my favorites are: Elf, The Santa Clause, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, The Holiday and I really enjoyed the Christmas Chronicles on Netflix this year. As a child we would always open up one present on Christmas Eve and they would always be Christmas Pajamas! I have missed this tradition and will be definitely bringing it back next year; I love Christmas pajamas!!
On Christmas day it is all about the food! We don’t do traditional fancy Christmas dinner, we stay in our pj’s and have Christmas breakfast! This was brought down by my husband’s family, we wake up and make waffles with strawberries and homemade whipped cream! My favorite waffle recipe is Ree Drummond Waffle Recipe , it takes some time, but they are totally worth it! Homemade whipped cream is also a very easy task, and way better than canned whipped cream. Good food is worth the time!!
During the day we either watch more movies, or play board games. Mine and my husband’s favorite board games are scrabble and bananagrams, but my favorite board games to play, with more than one person, is Pictionary, Clue, Scattegories, and Taboo! We also read the Christmas Story from the Bible, which can be found in the first few chapters of Matthew and Luke.
For Christmas dinner we eat pizza! This all came about when we had our first Christmas away from family and I had no groceries in the house, so we decided to order pizza for dinner, and now we do it every year, except now we/I make it from scratch. My favorite crust recipe is Fabio Viviani’s, I just add a tad more salt, some Italian herbs, and garlic powder. For the sauce I make my own, I have a personal recipe that I love and will share with y’all soon!
What are some of y’all’s Christmas/December/Christmas Eve traditions? Maybe I will steal some?!?
Karah's Kitchen 