[SuzBerg]

Okay let's have some fun and get into the "Christmas Spirit"!

What is a Holiday Tradition you enjoy with your family? It could be one you remember from your childhood or one you have started with your children.

There are no wrong answers - so let's hear your ideas !

[momraine]

Since we have an international family, we are doing an international feast on Chirstmas eve this year and hope it will be the start of a new tradition. We have Polish food, Russian Food, Jewish food, Mexican food and I can't even remember what else.

[Bippette]

My Mom used to put codes on our gifts instead of names, so that we didn't know which packages were ours. We spent weeks trying to break the code!!!

[crick]

One tradition my family did as a kid was caroling. I loved that! No one ever does it anymore and I was thinking about doing it this year with my kids. Their response? "You stand outside in the cold and sing??? That's just DUMB!"

We usually do the cut outs for the kids to decorate and make a huge mess.

This year we got a special pan that is a bundt in the shape of forest trees to bake a birthday cake for Jesus on Christmas Eve. We will have it for breakfast on Christmas morning. I'm a bad mom. lol! Cake for breakfast...how did I agree to this??

[HIATUS]

lol...i tried to get my friends to sing carols in a karaoke bar the other night, they were not havin it!

no christmas traditions yet..up until last year i would cross the international date line on christmas day. lol

thats changin....log home should be done by next christmas..week in the woods for every christmas after!!

[momraine]

I number our gifts. That way it lasts longer. When we did our first christmas with my son, it was over so fast and I felt so let down. I had looked so forward to his first christmas. So, now we do the gifts from the kids to each other on Christmas eve.
Here is how it works. We do our international dinner (added this year) and then we all go to church. On the way home from church we drive around a bit to look at lights. When we get home they get thier gifts from me and dad. It's always pajamas. So then they go put on thier pajamas and gather in the living room.
Then they hear a story, after the story, the youngest child gets to give out her gifts, then we do another story and then the next child and so on.
Then we hand out the gifts from out of town relatives. While all this is going on, I am backing cookies (slice and bake) and getting out Russian and Polish deserts and making hot chocolate with candy canes in them to stir it with and flavor it. I serve everyone during the stories. Then the kids go to bed.
Usually the stockings are hidden, they kdis have to follow clues to find them, but this year we are skipping this becuase my daughter has surgery on thursday and won't be fully recovered. And I just don't have time this year.
Anyway, when they get up they will go see what is int he stockings first and we will serve cinomon rolls and such while they look at everything in the stockings. Then we go to the living room. The gifts are numbered and I have the secret chart. The first one is always the youngest child. It usually goes up from there with adult and family gifts randomly interspersed to mess up the pattern. Most Years I have the gifts out early, but my niece would not leave them alone and would rip them open. She has never had holidays and is very sneaky and can't take surprises. Anyway, then we will go to Grandmas for lunch and more gifts. Anyway, those are our traditions. Oh and the last story of Christmas eve is always read out of the Bible. The one before it is the Night before Christmas and we have a whole stack of Christmas books we use for hte other stories.