Flashback Friday - Christmas Traditions

My sister Britta posted her Flashback Friday and it was so complete I asked if I could send people to her blog. She said "Sure, you can even copy and paste it if you want." So I did, with a few changes. Thanks Britta!

On Christmas Eve night, we always read the story of when Christ was born. All season, my mom had her nativity figures on the piano, but she kept baby Jesus hidden. As we read the story from the scriptures, we would put the baby in the stable, to symbolize that being the night of his birth. Then we had family prayer, picked a spot on the furniture for our stockings, then went to bed. Now, going to bed was not necessarily going to sleep. The excitement was always tremendous. One year, Britta and I couldn't sleep, and we decided to both sleep on the top bunk - my bed. This became our little tradition for a couple more years, until we were too big and it was too uncomfortable.

My mom is a nurse, and she almost always worked on Christmas Eve until 7 am Christmas morning, but she usually didn't get home until closer to 8. We weren't allowed to look at our presents until she got home. Until I was about 10, we had the presents in the living room, which you could see from the stairs coming up from my room. So we had to stay in the basement. Around my 11th birthday, my parents added on to the house, building a room above the garage. This made it easier to hide the presents, but until we were a little older, we still had to wait downstairs because it was too tempting to take a peek behind the blanket covering the doorway. My youngest brothers were escorted downstairs to wait with us until she got home. I remember meeting in Amanda and Ranna's room to play games and peeking out the window watching for our mother to come home - Britta and I shared a room which was in the back of the house. Dirk and Eric were old enough to want to stay in bed as long as possible, but the rest of us would huddle together, squealing with excitement. Even when she got home we had to wait a few minutes for mom and dad to hug and kiss and for them to come down and tell us it was okay.

One of our favorite things on Christmas morning was breakfast. We all got to pick our own box of cereal to eat that morning. The entire box was our own, and we only shared if we wanted to, which we frequently did. It was always a big decision to make when my mom asked what kind we wanted. As soon as my mom got home, we broke open the Christmas cereal, and ate as a family. This was my mom's sneaky trick to make sure we ate something healthy before attacking the candy. Thinking about these breakfasts brings back many fond memories. There was rarely a time besides Christmas morning with quite so much laughter and love in our house.

Me, Britta (in front), Ranna (in back), Amanda, Mom

After everyone was done eating, we lined up, oldest to youngest. We waited while my dad took the camera upstairs, exclaiming over the wonderful surprises, teasing us with his new knowledge of what Santa brought. We'd finally file upstairs when the blanket was removed, and rushed to our stockings. There was usually one present from Santa under the tree (Santa always left his unused wrapping paper in the kitchen for us to finish off next year), but the rest was unwrapped next to our stockings. Oooing and ahhhing over our gifts and showing them off to everyone else took several minutes. Then we gathered around the tree to find some more treasures. We would grab one gift and wait for everyone to have one, then open them all at the same time.

Dirk, Eric, Britta, Me

Mom, Joel, Me (the dark hair hiding behind the chair), Britta (in the stripes), Amanda (kneeling), Seth (hiding behind the tree)

We always drew names, then went to the mall together for Family Home Evening one night before Christmas. My mom split us up as best she could so she took half and my dad took half as we searched for the perfect gift for the person we drew, without letting the person in question see what this perfect gift was. This sometimes took some creativity because it didn't always work out perfectly when splitting in 2 groups - we frequently had triads. The triads required meeting in the middle to swap people. These gifts were under the tree, and were often some of the favorites.

After everything was opened, we played with our gifts for a while before heading off to Grandma's house. We usually went to my mom's parents' house in West Valley first for a while, then drove to Coalville to my dad's parents' house. By the end of the day, we were exhausted, but content. And we had the day after Christmas to look forward to, when we ate more cereal, candy from the stockings, and played with our new gifts most of the day.

This was at my mom's family Christmas party 2 years ago. We have added 4 kids since then! The adults were still expected to sit on Santa's lap until just a few years ago.

I have very fond memories of spending Christmas with my family. I love them all dearly and look forward to seeing them all in a few days for another Christmas together.