There is no more special time for a family than Christmas morning. My parents have always taken Christmas very seriously and instilled wonderful traditions and the love of Christmas into myself and my brother. The older I get the more excited I am to carry these traditions on with my own children and family one day. Here are a few of my favorite Christmas Morning traditions:
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| Everyone needs a crying Santa picture. |
Personal Christmas Tree: Growing up my brother and I both had our own personal Christmas Trees in our bedrooms. We got to decorate it ourselves every year and it was always very exciting for us. Mine of course was filled with Nutcracker ornaments! On Christmas Eve Santa would always leave a few small presents under our tree for us to open as soon as we woke up Christmas morning. I remember being a child and waking up every hour on the hour checking that tree to see if Santa had come! (Now that I’m an adult I know that this was just a ploy for my parents to sleep in a little longer haha)  |
| Waiting for Santa! |
Wrapping Paper: To wrap or not to wrap – every family does it differently but to me, everything (I mean everything) has to be wrapped! Santa even cleverly wrapped my gifts in one wrapping paper and my brother’s in another wrapping paper so as soon as we walked down the stairs we would know who’s “pile” was whose. Dad of course always play “trash man” as we throw our balled up wrapping paper to him after each gift.
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| Gotta love the '80s people. |
Breakfast: Every Christmas morning it is the same: Monkey Bread and Breakfast Casserole. Mom has tried to change it up here in the recent years and John and I have protested every time. You can’t mess with perfection I tell ya!
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| Me and the best Christmas present I've ever gotten. |
Advent Nativity Scene: My dad has a very old, paper nativity advent calendar that was his as a child. It is a church and you pull out a little box each day and open a different item from the nativity scene. Of course of Christmas it is always Baby Jesus. Well, my brother and I took opening up Baby Jesus very seriously and had to take turn year to year opening Him. We would have to write down every year who got to open Him that year so the next there would be no confusion (aka arguments) over it.
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| Our little family when it actually snowed on Christmas a few years ago. |
Order amongst the chaos: As kids this drove us NUTS but as I get older and my Type A personality grows, I can’t help but appreciate the little things my mom always did to make Christmas morning perfect. Let’s take vacuuming downstairs before we were allowed to come down and see what Santa brought (as an anxious child on Christmas morning this was torture but now I see why she wanted things to be nice and neat for the day). We also always take turns opening gifts. Again, as a child who just wants to rip into each and every gift it was so hard to control ourselves but now I love the fact that we all take turns and get to see each gift everyone opens.
Through it all though, we never forget the true meaning of Christmas and why we celebrate this holiday at all. I am so very blessed to have been able to grow up in a house and make these memories and traditions and that is never lost on me. If it weren’t for His birth, life and dying for our sins we would not have what we do today.
“For unto us a child is born.” Isaiah 9:6
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