Guys it’s Christmas Eve! So I wrote up a post and everything yesterday but I fell asleep before I could even hit publish so I decided just to do another today. 

As you guys may I have picked up on, I love Christmas, and this includes the various traditions that my family has, so I thought I would just share some of them with you guys! Feel free to leave yours in the comments!

• The one thing we have done every year since I was born, probably even before that is go to my grandparents house and do a gift exchange with our cousins, have Christmas dinner, and spend time with our extended family because we see the opposite side of our families the next day. Our gift exchange is assigned by picking names out a bowl and the only rule is it can’t be a sibling or spouse in the case of our parents.  I really like this because I just love spending time with my family celebrating and eating.
• After we get back from this we get to open one present, which is always pajamas to wear to bed that night so we have new ones for whatever reason.  This is probably one of my favorite ones because I love pajamas and I wear them all day if I don’t have anything going on, it’s just a nice present.
• I also love going to church. This is something I talk about a lot in my blog because religion is a very controversial subject, but I am a fairly religious person (I hope this doesn’t affect our relationship at all but if it does, I’m sorry) and I love going to what is typically Christmas Eve service, however, if my family has the unfortunate problem of having to serve on the alter, like my sisters and mom do this year, we go Christmas day.  It’s so nice to sing the Christmas hymns and here the story of Jesus’ birth every year.
• Christmas morning, of course with two younger sisters, I am awoken at the crack of dawn, by that I mean 7 am. I’m not really a fan of it, but I guess I get presents earlier this way. 
• Then as soon as they wake me up, they go to get our parents up, then my mom, my sisters, and I have to sit at the top of the steps while my dad fiddles with something downstairs (it’s been 19 years now and I still don’t know what he’s doing down there!) and then when we finally go down we first open our stockings and then go downstairs again, to the basement and open our presents.
• Another Christmas Tradition is the pickle that my dad hides in the tree, whoever finds it gets an extra present. Sometimes this is a two hour process, other times fifteen minutes, it all depends on how tricky he decides to be.  
• Finally, the last Christmas tradition that my family has is that anyone in our extended to family is invited to our house for dinner and it’s just nice to have everyone around the dinner table one a year laughing and sharing memories from Christmas’s past and what’s going on in everyone’s busy lives. 

Well I guess you guys can probably see better now why I love Christmas so much.  Anyway, please share your traditions in the comments! Have a very merry Christmas, or happy Hanukkah but that’s over now, well I hope you had a good one then! 

XOXO 

Mary