Christmas Traditions, how to keep them alive

Christmas traditions are something that I see being passed down from generation to generation. At some point the story of why or how it got started gets blurred, but it’s all the same. Because that is how we do it.

It’s no surprising that my family has changed some over the past year. I’ve gotten married, which you can see the photos here. J and I moved from the town that I had called the last 7 years home, which you can read about here. And now we have two families that we would give anything to spend time with during the holidays.

On top of all of my changes, my family has gone through some adjustments over the past few years. My cousins have gotten married, had families, moved away to college, and even my sister has moved recently. It’s getting harder and harder for all of us to be together for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

However, there are ways to keep them with me even when we aren’t all together. Our Christmas traditions have become second nature to me. Some of them I can’t imagine NOT doing during Christmas. It would just be plain weird and wrong. I mean really wrong. But I realized that I have a husband and I’m sure not all of his Christmas traditions growing up were the same as mine. And I’m sure that we will create our own traditions over the years.

But there are a few holiday traditions that I want to keep alive from my family. Here are my favorites:

1) new set of PJs on Christmas Eve so we can wear them on Christmas morning
2) watching the new and old version of Miracle on 34th Street on Thanksgiving
3) filling our stockings with knick-knacks and favorite candies
4) mystery gift for one person each Christmas Eve
5) no bake, chocolate oatmeal with coconut cookies like my Grandma makes
6) Theme nights for Christmas Eve (as you can probably tell by the photo)

This year we spent Thanksgiving with my family and plan to spend Christmas with his. So these little Christmas traditions is how I am going to keep my family close to me even though I can’t be with them.

Cheers!