Post your favorite holiday memory!

Re: Post your favorite holiday memory!

• juliagulia38 member

  November 2014

  I LOVE Christmas! I told DH this year we are staying home Christmas Eve and doing our own traditions. Every Christmas Eve, my mom, sister and I would make cookies for Santa and also the guards at the base my dad worked at. We would deliver the cookies after dinner, go look at Christmas lights, come home open one present and watch a Christmas movie. I want to do something similar with my kids.
  
  One year when I was maybe in middle school, I woke up in the middle of the night and saw a huge present for me. I went and woke up my brother, because he had the same one and we opened them. Haha they were tvs in a tin foul wrap thing. We wrapped them back up and went back to bed. I was naughty, I usually woke up in the middle of the night and would look at all the present and count them and then go back to sleep. Haha

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• bty19 member

  November 2014 edited November 2014

  Opening one gift on Christmas Eve. Always PJ's from my Grandma. Every year, until she passed away.
  
  ETA: I'm hoping my Dad will carry on the tradition with LO.

  
  
  
  
  

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• sleepymonkey member

  November 2014

  Every Christmas Eve my parents, brother and I would go out to dinner then drive around for at least an hour looking at Christmas lights.  We would go home and my brother and I would usually run around the house like maniacs because we were so excited for the next morning.  Then we would put out cookies and milk for Santa, hang our stockings, read The Night Before Christmas and then go to bed to attempt to sleep.  My family isn't big on traditions but Christmas Eve was always the same and I loved it.  I always pictured doing the same things with my child(ren) on Christmas Eve but unfortunately that is not how it will be because of other family obligations and I must admit that it makes me a little sad.
  

  

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• juliagulia38 member

  November 2014

  sleepymonkey said:

  Every Christmas Eve my parents, brother and I would go out to dinner then drive around for at least an hour looking at Christmas lights.  We would go home and my brother and I would usually run around the house like maniacs because we were so excited for the next morning.  Then we would put out cookies and milk for Santa, hang our stockings, read The Night Before Christmas and then go to bed to attempt to sleep.  My family isn't big on traditions but Christmas Eve was always the same and I loved it.  I always pictured doing the same things with my child(ren) on Christmas Eve but unfortunately that is not how it will be because of other family obligations and I must admit that it makes me a little sad.
  

  This is kinda the same boat I'm in. We rotate which family we see for the holidays. This year we live too far to see mine, and we have our own apt in the same city as my in laws so Christmas can be ours this year. But sometimes we will have to be at my parents house and not our own house because of where we live. So the traditions won't really be the same. I don't know if that made any sense. LO is screaming her head off while I'm peeing. Fun times.

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• Snoopylovesbelle member

  November 2014

  The Christmas when it was 4 and got a kitchen set and swore I heard sleigh bells and saw an elf . My mom always does Christmas up big and we enter the holiday light contest every year and win a lot!! I decorate my house too and can't wait to do things with LO.

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• playball13 member

  November 2014

  I loved decorating the house with my mom each year.

  

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• RJBrownie84 member

  November 2014

  My in-laws have a cookie decorating competition each year. The "kids" involved range from 14-35, so it's completely goofy and usually incorporates Star Wars/ Sasquatch/ octopi/ other random themes.

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• sleepymonkey member

  November 2014

  
  

  arnold94 said:

  sleepymonkey said:

  Every Christmas Eve my parents, brother and I would go out to dinner then drive around for at least an hour looking at Christmas lights.  We would go home and my brother and I would usually run around the house like maniacs because we were so excited for the next morning.  Then we would put out cookies and milk for Santa, hang our stockings, read The Night Before Christmas and then go to bed to attempt to sleep.  My family isn't big on traditions but Christmas Eve was always the same and I loved it.  I always pictured doing the same things with my child(ren) on Christmas Eve but unfortunately that is not how it will be because of other family obligations and I must admit that it makes me a little sad.
  

  
  You need to create new traditions.  I know it's hard with family pressure but you guys are your own family and need to do what you want to do.  My MIL had some issues with us doing our own thing after #1 was born.  She wanted to implement an every other Thanksgiving/Christmas between the two families (she's not local, my parents are).  Not even close to how DH and I had envisioned our Christmas's (or Thanksgivings) with the kids.  We put a stop to it pretty quick and now she understands why we did what we did and respects our decision. 

  The issue we have is that DH's family celebrates Christmas on Christmas Eve and my family celebrates on Christmas.  So we are expected to be with DH's family 2 hours away until late on Christmas Eve and with my family on Christmas (they live in the same town that we do).  DH is very unwilling to give up Christmas Eve at his mom's house so that leaves no time for us to have our own traditions on Christmas Eve.  It kind of bothers me that LO will be opening some presents on Christmas Eve, which to me will somewhat diminish the excitement of Christmas morning for her.  I know in the grand scheme of things, it's not a big deal and it's just an issue because it's different than what I grew up with, but I'm still having a problem being ok with it.
  

  

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• imrachellea member

  November 2014

  I LOVE Christmas so every year I strung up lights in my bedroom. One year my younger brother had a sleepover in my room with me because of my lights. We were so excited and could NOT fall asleep. Yet somehow we still ended up sitting at the top of the stairs the next morning at 5am, all three of us squished together while my dad got the camera ready before we could run down. I even remember wearing my red and white Christmas nightgown with bows on it. There was another Christmas with my little brother, when he was in high school and I was home from college. We had very different interests and didn't really hang out, but he stayed home to make chocolate chip cookies with me while we watched a Muppets Christmas Carol together and quoted the whole thing. Good times with my kid brother
  
  I also loved the first Christmas DH took me back to OH with him to meet his family for the first time

  

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• juliagulia38 member

  November 2014 edited November 2014

  sleepymonkey said:

  
  

  
  

  arnold94 said:

  
  

  
  

  sleepymonkey said:

  
  

  Every Christmas Eve my parents, brother and I would go out to dinner then drive around for at least an hour looking at Christmas lights.  We would go home and my brother and I would usually run around the house like maniacs because we were so excited for the next morning.  Then we would put out cookies and milk for Santa, hang our stockings, read The Night Before Christmas and then go to bed to attempt to sleep.  My family isn't big on traditions but Christmas Eve was always the same and I loved it.  I always pictured doing the same things with my child(ren) on Christmas Eve but unfortunately that is not how it will be because of other family obligations and I must admit that it makes me a little sad.
  

  
  

  
  You need to create new traditions.  I know it's hard with family pressure but you guys are your own family and need to do what you want to do.  My MIL had some issues with us doing our own thing after #1 was born.  She wanted to implement an every other Thanksgiving/Christmas between the two families (she's not local, my parents are).  Not even close to how DH and I had envisioned our Christmas's (or Thanksgivings) with the kids.  We put a stop to it pretty quick and now she understands why we did what we did and respects our decision. 

  
  

  The issue we have is that DH's family celebrates Christmas on Christmas Eve and my family celebrates on Christmas.  So we are expected to be with DH's family 2 hours away until late on Christmas Eve and with my family on Christmas (they live in the same town that we do).  DH is very unwilling to give up Christmas Eve at his mom's house so that leaves no time for us to have our own traditions on Christmas Eve.  It kind of bothers me that LO will be opening some presents on Christmas Eve, which to me will somewhat diminish the excitement of Christmas morning for her.  I know in the grand scheme of things, it's not a big deal and it's just an issue because it's different than what I grew up with, but I'm still having a problem being ok with it.
  
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  F that. I would do what I want. I'd tell DH that you want to make your own family traditions. Maybe you could compromise now, but when LO is older then you can do your own thing. I know it's not a big deal openings presents in Christmas Eve, but that would bother me too. Maybe you can do your family in the morning and DH's in the evening, and your family traditions Christmas Eve? Then again maybe I'm a bad daughter/daughter in law. Haha. This year I told DH I wanted to have Thanksgiving just our little family. My SIL and BiL are house parents and it's crazy at their house and I feel like we wouldn't have a good time. But then again we live in the same city as the inlaws so I'm sure we will be expected to be there. But I want to be like:
  
  

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• sleepymonkey member

  November 2014 edited November 2014

  @arnold94 - That's my hope, too.  It is very important to me for DD to grow up having Santa and I'm already trying to figure out how we'll work it.  And DH's family is strange.  For his family, it's Christmas Eve or nothing.  2 years ago, his stepbrother and his family couldn't make it down for Christmas Eve because he had to work so they came the day after Christmas.  MIL actually said to me that she didn't understand why they were even bothering coming down since it was after Christmas Eve.  Um, how about to visit their family and have the kids spend time with their grandparents?
  

  

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• anakah member

  November 2014

  All of these stories make me a little sad for my kids. I grew up celebrating Christmas as an "American" holiday much like thanksgiving. We'd set up the tree on Black Friday and we'd get one present from our parents and one "Santa" present. I loved that Santa had the same handwriting as my dad.lol. It was always exciting to open our presents on Christmas morning.
  
  Dh is Jewish though so no Christmas traditions for us. Hannukah just isn't the same and I'm not sure how to infuse the same sort of excitement into it.

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• Cambury108 member

  November 2014

  Well mine is a little different than everyone else's. While I have MANY Christmas holiday memories as a child and many as a mother I have to say my favorite is an Easter memory. It was the Easter I was 12. I met my dad for the first time ever. It opened my eyes and answered a lot of questions so for that I am grateful. The wondering about him would have eventually ate me up. He is not in my life now and its OK. I had the chance to meet him and get to know him and that is all I needed. 

  
  

  As a mother of course watching their faces light up with excitement but last Christmas was magical for us or me rather. I had almost died shortly after Raylin was born. So having all 3 of them curled up in my bed next to me opening gifts was all I could have ever asked for. Each day truly is a blessing. 

  
  

  We always do jammies on Christmas Eve for the kids but this year we are doing something a little different. I have seen it floating on FB its a shirt box with a movie,hot cocoa mix,microwave popcorn and jammies. We are doing a family box this year. I am SO excited. We are getting a family movie and each child is getting a Christmas book. It will be LO's first one. 

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• meleml member

  November 2014

  I was young, maybe 5 or 6 and my mom called my brother and I to the door to see "Rudolph" in the sky. It was an airplane, but we were so excited. I still think of that Christmas Eve every year. We also used to have little Christmas trees in our bedroom and Santa would always leave a small gift under it. We have really wonderful Christmas traditions now, but those 2 stick out for me. 

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