Do You Have A Holiday Tradition?

Tomorrow is December 1st, and it’s time for me to get busy and get in the season’s swing. Which got me thinking about family traditions. Following family traditions is a way of staying connected to our past and returning those memories. Doing these things can remind us of our childhood and people of the past.

Some of my holiday traditions are;

  1. Making and baking those goodies I only have around this time of year. Like Smog Bars and Rum Cake and Grandma’s Christmas Sauce.
  2. Eating Uncle Dick’s unique sandwich on Christmas Eve. The recipe will be here in a couple of weeks.
  3. Purchasing the ingredients for Christmas Day Wife Saver. It’s one of my favorites.

Ok, I’m starting to see a trend. It’s all about food.

  1. Watching Scrooge: A Christmas Carol at least two times. Scrooge was one of my grandfather’s favorite shows to watch. We had two channels when I was a kid, so he and I would watch it at least four times, once on each channel on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Although I also watch the newer ones, my favorite is still the very old one with Alister Simms (1951). I even have my own copy.
  2. Watching Charlie Brown’s Christmas. Before I had children, I’d watch every cartoon available during the holiday season.

Although I don’t do this, my grandson’s mom does. My mom told me that my grandmother would put all the children to bed on Christmas Eve, and the house looked like every other day of the year. But when they woke up, the house would be a Christmas explosion. Throughout the night, the house was decorated, and she would be prepared for a holiday feast. I don’t know how she did it.

One of my favorite memories was the Christmas Eve dinners my mom would put on for my dad’s side of the family. The house was filled with chatter and laughter, and my mom would cook a feast that could have fed at least a dozen more people. My dad would joke about inviting people driving by because there were always tons of leftovers.

Christmas 2010 – This would be the last Christmas that my mom (left) was at home. The following year, her Alzheimer’s would be so bad that she would have to have constant care. It’s not the best photo.. it was quite blurry, but I corrected it at MyHeritage with their photo correction tools.

One of the things I used to do with my own children was on a warmer evening, we would walk down Edmonton’s Candy Cane Lane. According to the Creswood Wikipedia page (where Candy Cane Lane is), it was started in 1968 and continues to this year, which will be its 55th year.

What are your Christmas traditions? Are they about events, food, or both? Tell me about them in the comments below.

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