Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Way Back When Wednesday

My posts will probably be sporatic for the next couple of weeks.  We have Christmas, two birthdays and a wedding all by January 3rd. 

But today for Way Back Wednesday, I thought I'd write about some of my childhood Christmas traditions that are spilling over into my adult, married life.

Christmas Eve
1.  We always drove around looking at lights around town.  Fun stuff.  Especially the one "tacky house" that always over decorated.  We still go when we're in the states.

2.  Christmas Eve dinner was always Mexican food.  Usually tacos or enchiladas.  One year the green peppers in the enchiladas made me puke Christmas morning.  That was NOT a fun morning. 

3. We are allowed to open one present on Christmas Eve.  I remember it taking me years as a kid to figure out that it was ALWAYS pajamas.  Us kids still get pjs.  It's fun.  This year, I got to pick them out.  They are perfect!

4.  My Dad reads the Christmas story every year just before we go to bed.  We never acted it out, thank goodness. There weren't enough of us.  We would be doing double or triple duty!

5.  After we all learned how stockings really work, we would draw names and buy for each other at the dollar store.  My Dad would give us all $10 in cash and we would all try to be sneaky in the same store buying stuff for each other.   It's gotten more fun over the years as I've gotten married and then when Derek and I brought our friend Yi home for Christmas a couple of years.  That was six of us trying to be sneaky.  I think we might have decided to split up into two groups and two dollar stores.  It makes stockings more fun.  Sometimes, depending on who's buying for us, we get pretty interesting things!  This year we did it a little different because it's hard for my Mom to go into stores.  I went to Wal-Mart and picked out one $10 thing or 2 $5 things.  We'll see how it goes...


Christmas Day
1.  Nobody was allowed to get up before 7:30.  After 7:30 we were welcome to go into Mom and Dad's room, but NO ONE was allowed to go see the tree or stockings.  This "rule" morphed as we got older.  We started sleeping in later.  One year I remember we didn't get Christmas going until after 10am!

2.  We all line up youngest to go open our stockings as my Dad would video tape the stocking at tree scene before we got to them.  This is a tradition that started with my Mom's family and has kept going with us.  It was always fun for me and my brother because we were the youngest of all the McGrath family!  When we lived in North Carolina, we had to be careful not to look to the right as we went down the stairs.  That's where the tree was, and we weren't allowed to look at it!

3.  After stockings, we ate baked apples.  Every year.  It was torture for me as a kid because first, I wanted to open my presents and second, I hated baked apples!

4.  Finally we went to the living room to open presents one at a time.  It was fun, and it made Christmas morning last longer.  And oh yeah, my Dad ALWAYS organized and handed out the presents.  He did a pretty good job.  No one finished too early.

5.  The rest of Christmas Day is always spent playing with our new toys.  And we usually have a big dinner.  This year we're having crock pot turkey.  I've never made it, but I think it will be good.

Hope you all have a very merry Christmas!

 
I don't look so hot, but Derek sure does!

2 comments:

  1. I LOVE hearing about others traditions! This is my second married Christmas and our first Christmas with a little one of our own, so it is fun to talk about traditions that we want to continue and traditions that we want to start in our own family! Hope you have a wonderful Christmas Eve and a very Merry Christmas!

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  2. Merry Christmas! I too like to read about traditions so I can find cool ones to "Steal."

    One we started is underwear in addition to the pj's. Stockings we leave outside bedroom doors and they can have those when they get up. We also eat breakfast and read scriptures before opening gifts, which our kids may also hate at some point, but for now we have a lot of control over this, but we can think about what is most important first.

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