Every family has their traditions and with Christmas coming tomorrow I would like to tell you about one of ours. My family comes from German ancestry and according to my mom that is where this tradition originate from, though I am sure parts of it are unique to our family.
When I was a little girl my family opened most of our Christmas presents on Christmas Eve. The only gifts we opened on Christmas Day were our stocking gifts and gifts we got from our grandparents who we would go see on Christmas Day. We would also have a birthday cake for Jesus on either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. I don’t remember much about this, because it stopped when I was still a little girl.
See when I was still pretty little I got a pretty big Christmas present in the form of a younger sibling born on Christmas Eve. That changed our family traditions. Since our family does make a big deal out of birthdays, we now spend Christmas Eve as a birthday party for my brother. We do still open one present on Christmas Eve as a sort of nod to our previous tradition, but not until we have finished my brother’s birthday dinner.
Every family has their own traditions. For the most part they are not inherently good or bad, just theirs. When families blend together they make their own traditions that may reflect a combining of what each family previously did or may be entirely unique to them. What kind of traditions does your family have this time of year, Christmas traditions, traditions for other holidays at this time of year, or just something your family does in December that you’d like to share?