My Family's Christmas Traditions
Christmas is THE time of year for traditions. There are some traditions that most families take part in – Christmas trees, decorating the house, giving cards – but there are also traditions which only some families do and you can pick and choose and create your own to make your way of celebrating Christmas entirely your own. Here’s just a few things that my family choose to do a Christmas time.
The Christmas Letter
This is practiced more by my parents than it is by me but I think it still counts as a family tradition. The Christmas letter is a summary of what we’ve been up to over the year and it gets sent out to all our family and friends. Part of this used to involve us all sitting down as a family and making Christmas cards together. We’d make loads. No exaggeration, I think we would hand-make over 100 cards every year for everyone on my parents Christmas list. Unfortunately, over the years we’ve all gotten a lot busier a we don’t really do the making cards bit anymore but the Christmas letter still gets sent out and we receive quite a few Christmas letters from other families. I’d like to take up this tradition myself when I move out – maybe next Christmas I’ll be sending out my own Christmas letter!
The Christmas Films
I’m sure everyone has their favourites and you’ll watch them year after year. My family is no different. We don’t have many but there are a couple of films that we just HAVE to watch at some point in December. The main one is Love Actually and while we watch it we’ll pick out the same silly flaws that we do every year – like the way Hugh Grant says the line “Love actually is all around us” at the very beginning (the emphasis should be on the word ‘actually’ not ‘is’). Our other main DVD is one which makes us a bit more unique, I think, and that is the short films of Robbie the Reindeer. I think either my brother or I received the DVD as a Christmas present one year and my dad absolutely loves it so it ends up making an appearance most years. Other films that I like to watch include Frozen (singing along, of course) and The Holiday.
The Vegetarian Christmas Dinner
Now, I must point out that I am no longer a vegetarian and this year I will be having Christmas dinner at my boyfriend’s house who will have the full traditional meat set up. However, my parents are vegetarian and I was a vegetarian for the first 18 years of my life until I went to university and decided I quite like meat. So, I’d say that the vegetarian spread is pretty integral to my idea of Christmas. The main focus is the stuffed roast butternut squash. That’s basically our turkey replacement. Then there’s all the normal veg, and there may be a couple of veggie sausages in there, and all this is presented in a plate-size Yorkshire pudding (cause why not?). Get all that sorted and you’ve got yourself a vegetarian Christmas dinner! According to my family anyway – I’m sure other vegetarian families have other ways of doing it.
The Christmas Walk
I actually know quite a few people who have said that their family will go for a walk on Christmas day and I think it’s a great idea! I mean, it’s generally good for you to get out of the house at least once a day anyway. As a child I used to make a fuss because I wanted to stay at home and play with my new toys but now I quite like taking a bit of time out of the day to get some fresh air. My family have a specific route that has become known as ‘The Christmas Walk’. We sometimes take that route at other times of the year but we still call it the Christmas Walk.
So, that’s me! But every family is different. How do you celebrate Christmas in your family?