Traditions

I love traditions, especially holiday traditions.  Tonight, however, we broke tradition.  For as long as I can remember, my family has always had a huge Christmas Eve dinner.  Nick’s family has always done the big dinner on Christmas night.  So for the last ten years we have blended our family’s traditions.  I usually cook the big Christmas Eve dinner, with the whole family, we open presents at our house in the morning, then have Christmas dinner at Nick’s mom’s house.  It is a lot, but it is always fun.  This year was very different.  My family didn’t make it up, and so we celebrated Christmas Eve very quietly, just the four of us.

I sent Nick to the store for a few last minute items, and asked him to pick whatever he wanted for dinner.  So we had roast beef and lobster tails, not quite keeping with tradition, but delicious.  The kids loved it.  We listened to Christmas music, and Tessie even had egg nog for the first time.  After dinner the kids each opened a present, a tradition from my childhood, and happily pulled out matching Christmas pajamas, one of our new traditions.  They each had a cookie for desert, and we put some out for Santa.  Once they were all ready for bed, the kids snuggled up on the couch with their Daddy, and he read them “The Night Before Christmas.”  Then, thanks to a suggestion from Tessie, we started a new tradition. 

We bundled the kids up, and headed outside to search the skies for Santa.  It was snowing, and beautiful.  We all looked our hardest, but the skies were cloudy.  The kids didn’t mind, and instead of looking for reindeer we all stuck out our tongues to catch snowflakes.  Before our children froze, we carried them back inside and tucked them in.    I cleaned up, wrapped the last of the presents, and filled the stockings.  As I sat looking at our beautiful tree and the colorful packages, I was absolutely content.  Our evening of traditions, old and new, was wonderful, special, and very beautiful.