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What Christmas Means to Me: My Favorite Holiday Traditions and Memories

Updated: Jul 26, 2020

I’m not someone who is huge on traditions. I don’t have a pair of lucky socks for exams or a certain ‘ritual’ I perform before doing something important. I can’t be easily convinced that I have a lot of constant ‘every year we must do _____’ events in my life, and I normally can’t recall any overly memorable events from holidays and family celebrations.


That is until Christmastime rolls around.


If you’ve followed the blog for very long, you know I have a strong affinity for all things Christmas. Whether it’s being viewed with a traditional and faithful lens or it’s celebrated with Santa and Rudolph, it’s it’s Christmas-y I. Am. Here. For. It.


Just like A Christmas Carol, I take a little time to reflect on Christmas past. Unlike Scrooge, my prior experiences in the holidays bring me joy, laughter, and smiles. It’s a season I’ve spent with family and friends close each year. Through that time I’ve made some very special memories and have even built some traditions with a long lineage behind them.


One of my favorite contemporary Christmas songs is “What Christmas Means to Me” by Stevie Wonder. (If you’ve seen Elf, this is the song that’s playing when Buddy eats gum off the railing and visits the home of the World’s Best Cup of Coffee!) Even though the verse in the song that starts “I see your smiling face” doesn’t make a whole lot of sense being sung by ole’ Stevie (bad joke, I’m sorry), the song lists off all the things that he loves about Christmas! Every time I hear the tune it gets me thinking about all of the little things that make the season special. And what better way to spread Christmas cheer than to share a few of my wacky traditions and crazy memories with you!


Something that I’ve learned is “strange” as I have gotten older is that we open our gifts on Christmas Eve. In fact, I can’t remember ever opening gifts on Christmas morning. No, we aren’t monsters, just let me break it all down for you:


As a Catholic family, we have become accustomed to attending church on Saturday night rather than Sunday morning since we always have the option of either. During the holidays, it only feels natural to attend Christmas Eve mass in the evening instead of the morning service on Christmas Day so most years we would get dressed up, pile in the truck, and head to town for the service. Afterwards, we would take a drive around town and the countryside to look at Christmas light displays. By the time we got home, Santa had always stopped by for what was usually a half a glass of Diet Coke and Christmas Oreos (Santa had a very specific menu at our house…) in exchange for a hoard of presents. There was even a stint for a few years where my sister and I had our own, smaller tree in our shared bedroom that was for Santa gifts only, and there’s really no feeling that compares to running through the house, up the stairs, and to your room to find a pile of packages from the North Pole!



After seeing the presents that had arrived that evening do you think we would be able to sleep and wait to open them until morning? No, duh, hence the Christmas Eve gift-opening extravaganza.


Before I explain the next few traditions, you have to understand that my sister and I are some of the biggest, dorkiest goofballs you will ever meet. By the amount of inside jokes and weird traditions we have amongst ourselves you would think we were twins. We aren’t freaks but we are pretty quirky, so with that…


After taking a quick inventory check on the number of new presents that were present, we typically changed into a new set of Christmas-y PJ’s. It was only a few years ago that Mom and Dad stopped getting us at least new fleece PJ pants, and I would be lying if I said I didn’t miss it (Mom, if you’re reading this..). We loved making fun of the kids on commercials and movies at Christmas, and Anna and I’s joke was always that we were ‘cute little angels,’ which produced photos like this:



Quick side story, I actually remember that those bags held a new Webkinz for each of us, the Holy Grail of Christmas gifts. Anna and I must have been extra good that year, because I remember this being a HUGE deal. Oh, the days of Webkinz… #IfYouKnowYouKnow


If we’re going to talk about another memorable Christmas gift, the MOST important of them all would be the Wiggles game! Back in the day, I was obsessed with the Wiggles. I was their biggest superfan and I didn’t even have cable TV to watch them on- my first school backpack was even on-brand with the singing, dancing Aussies. Now I have to come clean for a moment- I was only about three and a half so I really don't have a firsthand recollection of receiving the coveted Wiggles game, but after rewatching the VHS footage many years later I can safely say my excitement for receiving this gift might only be matched by my future wedding or the birth of my children. I was yelling, screaming, and running between the two rooms trying to bounce off the walls. This story, unfortunately, has a sad ending- the game really sucked. I remember replaying it when going through things to get rid of a few years later and it was a joke. However, the excitement it brought was probably the best gift I could have gotten.



Back to the goofy traditions. Probably the weirdest tradition my sister and I have is ‘The Pegasus Bag’. When my sister was younger she was all about Barbies. One year for her birthday, my mom bought her a few party favors that were themed with the new Barbie pegasus movie. Along with hats and party horns (that were later taken away because we were too loud, big surprise there), she brought home a themed gift bag. Now if you had a good mom, you know to always save gift bags when you can because they are kind of expensive, so the pegasus bag was saved and fell to the bottom of the gift bag tote.


I really don’t know how the Christmas tradition evolved, but after we found the bag many years later, we knew it needed to be used. Since then, my sister and I alternate years on who’s turn it is to give the ‘Pegasus Gift’. It’s usually an inside joke or sarcastic gift and it must follow these rules:


1. The gift must not cost any money.

2. The gift must be homemade by the gift giver.

3. The Pegasus Gift is always the last gift opened at Christmas.


It’s weird, I know. I wish I could tell you I know how ‘The Pegasus Gift’ came to be, but I really have no idea. All I that gifts have varied in snarkiness from year to year and create a lot of laughs. My personal favorite is a chicken nosewarmer Anna crocheted for me the winter I must have b*tched a lot about my nose being cold (yes, this photo is stupid and no I don’t use it, you freak):



After opening all the presents, we pick a movie to watch as a family and eat ‘ice cream snowmen’, which is basically just three little, round scoops of ice cream stacked on top of each other. It’s something my dad started doing when we were little and now it just feels wrong to not have one on Christmas Eve.


I have a lot of favorite memories of gift-giving with friends, too. When looking through old photos for this blog post, I found a picture from high school when I had a holiday sleepover with my friends Ashlie and Grace. We bought matching Christmas leggings, did each other’s makeup to take snazzy new photos, and I was even gifted a ‘poop pillow’ (stop judging, look at the photo below, then come back). But there was one part of the sleepover that was so memorable and iconic that it deserved its own mention in the blog: I was maybe 15 or 16 at the most. In 2015, what movie did every 16 year old girl want to see? Magic Mike.


YES. MA’AM. We were bound and determined to see that R-rated, male-stripper filled movie if we died trying. We orchestrated a plan we thought was wicked to help us accomplish this ‘insane’ and ‘totally bad’ ‘illegal’ viewing of Magic Mike.


First, I begged my band director to let us stop at Walmart on the way home from an honor band audition so I could buy the goods. Cool as a cucumber, I walked back to the DVD section, picked up the movie (the deluxe version because go big or go home, amirite?), and headed towards the checkout. Since I wasn’t 17, my master plan was to go to the self checkout because the checker can’t ask you your age if there isn’t one. I confidently strutted up to the check out and scanned the case - ‘beep, boop’. Then what happens?


“PLeASe SEe ASsoCiATe fOR aSsisTanCE.”


I panicked. I panicked hard. The old lady in the little blue vest shuffled over as I calmly practiced my fake birthday in my head. She asked for my date of birth, and I casually rattled off a date that put me comfortably beyond 17 years old. “Perfect.”


“Can I see some ID?”


Seriously lady? I’m buying a DVD, not cigarettes. I thought on my toes and lied to Mrs. Walmart, explaining that I left my ID at home because I was on a school trip and didn’t want to lose it. The lady looked me square in the eye and stared at me for about 15 seconds before aggressively typing the number that okayed the purchase into the kiosk. I don’t know if she didn’t feel like arguing or just had a burst of Christmas spirit, but I know that she did not believe me. I paid, snagged my receipt, and rushed out of that store before the FBI got to me.


My struggles didn’t end there- I had to hide the film from my mother (because “we're a good, Christian family”), get the movie to Ashlie’s house, hide it from her mom and dad, and wait until the others in the house went to bed to pop it in. No shame, I actually really liked Magic Mike, and not just because Channing Tatum was lookin’ like a snacc (it actually has a great plot, too). We probably would have enjoyed the movie more if we didn’t feel guilty for the entire hour and 51 minutes (Ashlie definitely would have enjoyed it more had she not fallen asleep 15 minutes in), but I will never forget Christmas where we were bad to the bone.


These are just a couple of my favorite Christmas traditions and memories. There are so many others I could include- enough for at least another post (let me know if that’s something you want!). I guess to cap it all off, I leave you with this cheesy, important statement: It’s not about the gifts you give, the things you get, or the perfection of it all. Christmas means kinship, laughter, love, and a whole lotta lying at Walmart over a movie with male strippers.


To leave you with a few last laughs, here’s a couple of my favorite Christmas photos from over the years!


This was the year I gave Anna a squid hat as a part of her Christmas present. I don't know why she was obsessed with squids at the time, but I do know it still makes an appearance at the beach-themed pep band night to this day!
Everytime there was good packing snow on Christmas, Anna and I would make the biggest snow mound ever. Then, we would try to get Penny to stay on top of it. She was always *thrilled* to be up there, as you can tell by this photo of her mid-escape.
Last Christmas I was carrying a bunch of decorations up to my apartment that I brought from home. I may or may not have been trying to carry too many things at once when the nativity set when tumbling down to the parking lot. There were bits of porcelain baby Jesus everywhere and a trail of Wisemen from my truck to the scene of the accident- it was a sad, sad situation.
Another 'outdoorsy' Christmas tradition was going for a ride in the snow in our crappy old flat bottomed boat. Dad tied the boat up to the four wheeler and took off across the snow, with Penny tagging along behind. Mom just tried not to watch!
Truth be told, I'm not sure if this photo is actually from Christmastime or not. But it features a massive snow drift, my first dog Alice, Dad with so much more hair, and me in a cute outfit- what's not to love!

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