My Christmas Traditions

Everyone has their traditions for the holidays. On Thanksgiving, people generally watch football and yell at the tv; on Fourth of July, people have cookouts and eat hamburgers and hotdogs. Today, I am going to share with you the traditions my family has for the Christmas Season of the year.

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So, the first tradition we have is putting up the Christmas tree. Everyone does
this at different times of the season, but we put up our tree the day after Thanksgiving. Here is what our tree looks like.

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Usually, my brother August has a tradition of breaking at least one ornament, but he has stopped that one recently. Our next tradition is to take a family picture in front of the tree. We started this tradition only four years ago.

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A third, and very tasty, tradition for us is to have a Sorry! tournament. If you don't know what Sorry! is, it is a board game that uses cards to determine how far you move your pieces. There is not much skill involved, so really anyone could win. For Christmas, to make it special, we replace the game pieces each person is supposed to move with Hershey Kisses. (The pieces for the board game look very similar to a Hershey Kiss.)

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As there is only four players, and there are five of us, I usually play with Mom and split the winnings with her. (We split up the Hershey "game pieces" at the end of each game according to the winners.) Yum! Our fourth tradition is the Christmas dinner. For us it can vary, but is normally ham, mashed potatoes, deviled eggs, dinner rolls, shell macaroni and cheese (delicious), and more. In our area where we live, they have a different Christmas feast. This includes tamales, chicharrones with a green salsa, and buñuelos.

Tamales--Click To Enlarge

"Chicharron in green salsa"--Click to Enlarge

Buñuelos--Click To Enlarge

The fifth, and final, Christmas tradition falls on Christmas day. Each Christmas, we never know when we will wake up. Mom and Dad have set the earliest we can wake them up at 7:00 A.M. However, they sometimes trick us and wake us up earlier. One year, to beat us to the mark, they woke us up at 2:00 A.M. on Christmas! At least we had coffee with cool whip to keep us awake! If you live here in the valley, however, 2:00 A.M. isn't early. Our neighbors stay up on the night of Christmas Eve to midnight, and then they open all their presents, eat a large breakfast meal, and go to sleep after. We also sometimes open up our stockings on Christmas Eve, just for something different. So, now you have seen some of my family's traditions for the Christmas time of year. What traditions do you have? Feel free to share them with me through Facebook or the comment section of my blog.