Tradition, Tradition!

I am just starting to realize that I border on being obsessed with traditions. For me, every holiday is surrounded by traditions. For example, I make the same breakfast and lunch on Easter every year, and the lunch (on Easter Saturday) is a PICNIC, no if-ands-or-buts. Last year it was raining, so we spread a blanket on our living room floor and had a picnic on the floor in our apartment. And I loved it!

Christmas is the same way - I wouldn't dream of having a Christmas without all my wonderful traditions. It's ingrained in me - that's the way I grew up. We had a million traditions around Christmas time. All of the traditions on my list below are either Sterzer or Walker traditions that I am continuing with my family.

Homemade Candy...

Ahhhh, what is Christmas without homemade caramels, toffee, chocolate covered nuts, shortbread cookies, chex mix, caramel popcorn...? Not only enjoying the platters of goodies on Christmas Eve, but gathering together with family members to make, dip, frost, and wrap them. I've made caramels every year since we moved away from family. For me, that is the most essential Christmas candy of all. These are the treats I made this year:

Chocolate covered cashews, Almond Roca toffee, 4-layer snickers bars, chocolate covered caramels, and wrapped caramels.

Gingerbread Sleighs...

I posted pictures of our sleigh decorating party already. This is a Walker tradition that we will definitely keep alive in our family. We had a blast making them, and then we filled them up with homemade candy, added a little gingerbread-man tree ornament (made from the scraps of dough leftover from the sleighs), and delivered them to our neighbors.

New Ornament...

I like to get one special ornament for our family each year. A few days before Christmas I was telling Jed how I wanted to make this a tradition for our family. I told him I had an idea for our 2007 ornament, but I hadn't been able to find something like it at the stores. I thought it would be fun to have a gift ornament for this Christmas because we still have one remaining unopened gift this year: baby Eliza! She is our most exciting and wonderful Christmas gift of all!

Well, on Christmas Eve Jed surprised me with our 2007 ornament. He had made a little ring box into a present by carefully wrapping it up with Christmas paper. He even had a ribbon around the edges, and had a beautiful tiny bow on top. The present had a tag that read "Christmas 2007" in his own writing. And guess what! He made it so that it can still be opened up, and inside the box he made a little card that said "Eliza" that we are supposed to replace with a picture of her as a newborn when she arrives. I love it! It's perfect - she's our little belated Christmas gift this year, and you can snap open the ornament to see her little baby picture. Isn't this the cutest little ornament, and isn't my husband the sweetest?

Singing Christmas Carols on Christmas Eve & Reading Christmas Stories all month long...

I have a binder full of Christmas stories that I like to read as a family throughout December. My family always purposely saved these favorites for Christmas Eve: The Man Who Missed Christmas, Christmas Day in the Morning (well known - boy milks cows for dad), and The Solitary Gift. Growing up, we would sing and sing and then read a few stories, and then sing some more, and so forth. I love that!!

Chicken a la King...

Christmas Eve dinner has been and always will be Chicken a la King. It means "Chicken for the King" - it's like a thick delicious gravy with shredded chicken in it and other ingredients, and you serve it inside of "crowns" of bread that have been toasted in a muffin tin to resemble 4-pronged crowns. It's a perfect meal for the night before the birth of our King, and my family has served it on Christmas Eve for generations.

Christmas Breakfast...

We always have Christmas Eggs, bacon, sausage, muffins, and orange juice for breakfast on Christmas morning. Christmas Eggs are delicious - we only have them once a year and that makes them even more special. You crack an egg in each hole in a greased muffin tin, sprinkle them with salt and pour 1 T. cream over each egg. Bake for about 12 or 13 minutes at 350, on a rack just one level higher than usual. They will still appear jiggly and undone, but they are actually cooked and perfect to serve. Ah, marvelous!Puzzle...
When we spend Christmas break with the Walkers we always set up a great big puzzle on Christmas day, and then we all work on it together for the next few days. We all just hang out in the basement - some people will be playing pool, others will be playing a game or talking, and a few of us will be working on the puzzle. It is so fun!

The day after Christmas Jed and I went to the store with Benny, and we picked out a 1,000 piece puzzle to do together during our Christmas break. We set it up at about 2pm, when we put Ben down for a nap. Well, thanks in part to my compulsiveness, we had it totally completed by 1 am that night! We worked on it together for hours, and when Jed got sick of it and left I still couldn't stop working on it, and because I was constantly pouring over it, Jed kept wandering over to work on it too. It was a blast! And isn't this a cool puzzle?

One brand new tradition that I would like to start with my family is to get Christmas PJs the first day of the Christmas season. I think I like that better than getting them on Christmas Eve, because then you can wear them and enjoy them the whole month leading up to the big day. (And since I didn't grow up with that particular tradition, it doesn't bother me to change it from the traditional Christmas Eve. I hope none of you are scandalized by my blatant disrespect for this generally accepted Christmas tradition! :) ) I think it would be fun to have a day filled with decorating for Christmas and listening to Christmas music for the first time that season, and then to top it off with a special pair of pajamas to celebrate the start of the holidays. It just so happened that that's the way it worked out this year with Benjamin since my parents were visiting over Thanksgiving, and I loved it.

Well, that's all that I'll mention - but don't think I don't have a bunch more! :) I love Christmas! All these fun traditions make it especially exciting and festive for me. Thank you, Mom and Dad, for raising your family with lots of family bonding traditions. The older I get the more I appreciate all these fun traditions that we did as a family.