My Favorite Christmas Tradition
When I was in middle school, my mom gave my brother and me a miniature Christmas tree. Every year we were given one ornament to put on the tree. The idea was that when we went to college or moved out we’d have our own tree full of ornaments and Christmas memories. And she was right! When I got married, my husband and I lived all over the place and never had a big tree–so my little mini tree was our only decoration. And I think it’s my favorite decoration we own!
I know I’ve told you about my mini tree before (because I love it so much!) but this year when we were opening up our Christmas boxes and sifting through the decor, pulling out Christmas DVDs and unwrapped our ornaments, I was so happy to see the most highly anticipated and oohed-and-ahhed over pieces were for our mini trees! Now everyone in our family has one–my husband’s is full of Snoopy ornaments, Lydia’s is mostly fairies and princesses while Asa only has 3 ornaments–a baby Pluto, a tin train engine and a sledding snowman. Poor little guy kept looking around for more ornaments to put on his tree!
The kids hung their ornaments with meticulous care. They were proud to be setting up their tree. I could see the happy ownership on their faces–these are THEIR trees! It actually makes me excited to think that one day they will take their trees (filled with ornaments and memories) to their first dorm or first apartment. I love passing on a tradition to them that my mom gave to me!
I think even little things like Christmas ornaments or special recipes or favorite Christmas movies when treated at as special traditions strengthen a family bond. And I think our mini trees do just that!
YOUR Favorite Christmas Tradition
Today I’m kicking off a Holiday Exchange with some other bloggers and Nestle. The next two weeks I’ll be posting some fun Christmas ideas, recipes (like how much do you want to make this brownie bites sundae?!), tips and more. Then I’ll ask you to exchange your ideas with us—and if you do, you could win some really great prizes from Nestle. (Like, really good stuff–and it gets better every week–think cashola!)
Today’s prize is a Family Movie Night Package including “A Christmas Story” Collector’s Edition DVD, 3 flavor pack of Ovaltine (which I’m pretty sure you can turn into hot chocolate!), Raisenets (yum!), a family sized dinner from Stouffers and cups from Edy’s/Dryer’s!
All you have to do is leave me a comment about your favorite holiday tradition and you’ll be entered to win! Isn’t that fun? The comments will be a treasure trove of fun Christmas ideas!
Of course, if you’d like to spread the word by 1) blogging your idea and linking here, 2) subscribing to my feed (so you don’t miss out on the rest of the Holiday Exchange posts), 3) tweeting something like: “Check out @oohamanda’s mini Christmas tree tradition and win a family movie pack from Nestle Family. http://bit.ly/ohtradition” or 4) facebooking about this post, I’ll be sure to give you an extra entry if you leave me an additional comment for each.
And don’t forget to check out the other fabulous blogs participating in Nestle’s Holiday Exchange–24/7 Moms, Southern Plate, The Mommy Files and Supermom Central. They are all sharing holiday traditions today—and hey, you can enter to win on their site, too!
My favorite Christmas tradition is adding new ornaments to the tree every year. I make it a habit to add at least one ornament for each family member. The ornaments are something that will define that individual. For instance this year I will be adding a tricycle for my oldest grandson. That is what he has enjoyed the most over the past year. I will be adding an Elmo ornament for my second grandson. Elmo is the first character/object he has really become attached to. I will be adding a “Baby’s first Christmas” ornament for my newest grandson for obvious reasons. For my oldest daughter I will be adding an Angel. She has been through so much this past year and has remained strong through all of it. She says her Guardian Angel is watching out for her. For myself I will be adding an ornament relating to weight loss because that is the big thing I began tackling this year.
I’ll go first. A favorite holiday tradition…. spending Christmas morning at our house. We decided when the Princess was born that we would have Christmas morning with just the immediate family. No rushing off to a family member’s house. Just relaxing pajama time, hot chocolate and love. It’s my favorite morning of the year.
My grandma always made special Christmas cookies and candies every year…who’s grandma doesn’t right? Well, I always loved her treat called Church Windows. She is now in a nursing home, and I just HAD to find out how to make those yummy and pretty church windows. I researched and found the recipe and guess what? It consists of only butter, chocolate chips, and colored mini marshmallows! Now I make them every year for my kids, and always think about my precious grandma…
Ever since we were first married, my Husband and I always buy at least one ornament a year from someplace we’ve traveled to. It can be as fancy as commemorating our big trip to Disney or just a day at the State Fair. We have loads of memories when we unbox the ornaments.
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We like to go drive around and look at Christmas lights.
My favorite Christmas tradition is either taking my daughters to see The Nutcracker or hanging our yearly pictures over our mantle. I have a clothespin with pretty paper and the year marked on each one and I clip each year’s pictures to the corresponding clothespin. I love looking back and remember each season of life. Our pictures start in 1997 when my husband and I were very newly dating as seniors in high school. Its funny to not only look at body language but our silly clothing styles as they have changed.
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I like making new traditions for my boys… does that count? This year it’s lighting a candle to read our Jesse Tree devotional together and reading boucoups of Christmas books!
One of my favorite traditions is having a buffet of appetizers on Christmas Eve and watching Christmas movies.
I think my favorite tradition is one we started a few years ago doing the Shoe Boxes! I love gathering everything together and knowing that while it may be a small gift, it will bless someone else in a BIG way! 🙂
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My family has started taking a vacation over Christmas together. I love it because it eliminates the stress of buying gifts, but we still get to make great memories together.
Oooh! I want this to be my tradition! LOVE.
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We have a great tradition that is 14 years old. One year we decided to make an advent calendar–however we were broke. So we took some Christmas cards and made a calendar on poster board. Now the kids write their initials on paper & we randomly put them over the cards. Then as those days go by the kids take their papers off & on the last one it is Christmas morning–time for celebrating!
My favorite tradition is wrapping 25 Christmas books for my kids to unwrap each day in December. This year I am short 6 books so I will be borrowing them from the library.
This is small, but dad used to write us a note from Santa on the napkin we left out by the milk and cookies. I always looked forward to what “Santa” would say.
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I so love ur blog. In fact there are many days I just think I wih I could write like u! My favorite memory is decorating with my grandma, GeeGee. She woukd hand me ornaments she and Pop had given my brother n I over the years while she told stories about each-they have the year written on each, one for Tom and one for me. I just put up the rest of my tree tonight and I did the same..recalling memories of it all.
What a fun tradition! We get the kids an ornament each year (as I was given all thru my childhood), but we don’t have mini trees–maybe next year.
My favorite sort of new tradition (started 5 years ago on my son’s first Christmas and our first in this house) is this: our neighborhood puts out luminarias on Christmas Eve so we go for a walk (we’re in Phoenix so it’s pleasant weather) around the neighborhood looking at the luminarias and Christmas lights. Last year we also got in our car and drove around to look at more lights. Fun!
My favorite holiday tradition is to pick up Christmas tree and decorate together
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Our tradition is that we put our tree up the day after Halloween – the kids love it!
We like to pick two children from the Angel Tree and shop for toys for them.
When I was growing up our Christmas Tradition was to eat Lasagna and go bowling. My kids like eating baked french toast, then opening their stockings in front of the fireplace.
My fav. holiday tradition is going to look at all the beautiful xmas lights
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