What are your Christmas traditions?
Growing up the tradition was to go to church on Christmas Eve. Here is the funny part, Santa would come while we were at church. I don't have a clue why this is when he came. My parents were wonderful Christian people, very involved in the church so it seems strange to me that Santa came while we were at church. I guess I need to ask my dad this one! My father would sneak out of church and set everything up. When we came home and the tree was lit in the window it meant Santa had been there. Our Christmases were big and we were very spoiled.
With my own children we have done Santa on Christmas morning. Pretty much the normal tradition for most families. When we moved to California 22 years ago we would go over to my aunt & uncles on Christmas Eve to exchange gifts. Christmas day has always been just the four of us as we have no other family member here. Since my aunt/uncle passed away and the kids have grown we have done Christmas day here with a lovely family dinner. On Christmas Eve I go to church and watch It's A Wonderful Life. The kids go and spend the evening with their significant others families.
I work very hard putting Thanksgiving dinner together, decorating the tree, the house and baking a lot of delicious Christmas cookies. Not to mention all the shopping, wrapping of gifts and shipping all the out of town gifts to relatives. So last year when Christmas came around I made a decision that I wanted to enjoy Christmas day and didn't want to cook. We ordered some special Chicago deep dish pizza for the day and it was one of the most enjoyable Christmas days for me. We started a tradition with the four adult children decorating gingerbread houses so we will be doing that again this year. We open presents for hours with a few breaks in between. We are also going to be doing the Chicago deep dish pizza again too! I am thrilled that I will be able to enjoy the day and not have to spend most of it in the kitchen cooking.
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