As the Holidays arrive I realize that there becomes more and more talk about “Traditions”. People chatting about their childhood, about their family, or even the traditions they want to pass on to their kids. Growing up my family had a few Christmas traditions that I simply LOVED. My husbands family growing up had a bunch of Christmas traditions, most of them they still do to this day. I love being a part of it now! With all the talk about traditions it has Matthew and I thinking about what we want to pass on to our children. I thought I would share some of our favorite childhood, current, and hope to be future Christmas Traditions with you.
Ashley’s Favorite Childhood Traditions:
-The Christmas Tree
By far the my most happiest childhood memories all come from around Christmastime. Finding our Christmas tree was definitely my favorite! Every year, usually after church, my Mom, Dad, brothers and sister would all bundle up and head to the Christmas Tree Farm. We would all search for our perfect tree, us kids running around finding branches or something to try to convince mom to take home with us. My dad would always make some sort of “Christmas Vacation” quote at some point. When we found the tree we would head home and Mom would always have a pot of chili waiting for us. We would eat and then start on our tree! Mom always had christmas music playing and she always let me help put out her snowman collection. These were just simple, but such happy moments for me!
-Christmas morning
I am an early bird in general. Always have been. SO early that my Mom taught me to work the TV at a young age because I would wake up way before any human needed too. Add that to my childhood excitement for Christmas and you had one early riser on Christmas morning. My parents had a a couple rules. 1. I was ABSOLUTELY not allowed to wake up my siblings. 2. Once all my siblings WERE awake, we could all quietly tell Mom and Dad we were awake and then we could open our stockings while we waited for Mom and Dad to come out. Now a few things would always happen. 1. I would ALWAYS “accidentally” wake up one of my siblings. Usually Breanna, the youngest and have her “wake up” my brothers. Every year it seemed to get a little earlier. My parents eventually caught on to this and gave me a time. We were not allowed to wake them or open our stockings until the designated time. (I want to say around 6:00ish. And trust me, I had already been long up by this time!) But what I loved THE most about me waking up first on christmas morning was seeing the tree. My parents never put a single gift under the tree so when we woke up The tree was surrounded by gifts. It was always so pretty! My mom always bought coordinating wrapping paper and she always stacked our gifts in such an organized way. (Big to little, etc) It probably looked like a catalog tree! It really was the best.
These might seem like your average kids memories, but to me, they were the best! We had lots of other Traditions. Like going to my Grandparents “old peoples club” ( thats what I called it as a kid) where we ate dinner, saw Santa and the grandkids of the members always gave mini performances. I sang there almost every year from age 6 ( maybe?) Until I was 14 or 15. I think. I hated it and loved it all at once. We had so many other little traditions I could name, but these were just a few of my favorite!
Matthews Favorite Childhood Traditions:
-One of my favorite christmas traditions was the first thing we did on Christmas morning. My 3 siblings and I would wake up and there would be four presents in the hallway with four different wrapping paper. But we didn’t know whose was which gift. Inside was a new pair of jammies for each of us but the fun was figuring out who they belonged too, and whose wrapping paper went with that jammie. All of our presents under the tree matched the paper that was ours. We would then all try to sneak a peak around the bottom of the stairs to see how many presents we had under the tree!
-My second favorite traditions (if you know me this comes as no surprise!) is our giant christmas brunch! It always has way more food than necessary but it is all delicious. It starts with fresh homemade cinnamon rolls straight from the oven and strawberry soup! The main course is steak, eggs, potato puffs, and mushrooms. Of course the rest of the day was filled with stuffing whatever space was left with one of the dozen or so cookies my dad bakes or the amazing caramel corn my mom makes!
We still have a lot of traditions with both of our families, they have just changed form somewhat. We still have the big Steak and Eggs dinner with Matthews family. We still go Christmas Tree hunting with my family. Its all a bit different, but still just as meaningful.
As Eloise ( and any future children we may have) get older we definitely want to carry on a few of our favorite traditions. Like the Christmas PJ’s. (Matthew has bought me Pajamas for christmas every year since we’ve been married!) If we have multiple children we would like to continue the wrapping paper tradition. We want to go to a Christmas tree farm and we want to make sure we go to the Christmas Eve service at church. I am sure we will collect and start our own as we go! It’s so fun to think that in 30 years Eloise might be having a conversation with a friend just like this one! I hope I can make her memories great!
Photos are from the always fabulous Deborah with DG Photography. 
