Blogmas Day 24: Christmas Traditions

Hi everyone! I am really looking forward to writing this post today, I can tell that I am really going to waffle on because these are some of the things that I love to talk about. Firstly however, I wanted to say that although I promised I would be writing everyday in December, there will be no post tomorrow because it's Christmas Day! I don't want to be stressing about writing, or constantly checking my phone or anything, and to be honest, I don't want people to be sitting on their computers reading my blog - I want them to be having fun and enjoying themselves with their friends and family! I will be continuing with my daily posts after Christmas though, so you don't need to get too depressed!


Today I am going to be talking to you about my Christmas traditions that myself and my family do every year. I'm one of those insanely irritating people who hate change and love to cling onto absolutely everything that we do every year without allowing anything to be different.

Starting off with our tree. Every single year (without fail) we get our Christmas tree in the second weekend of December. It's always a real one and we always decorate it with the same decorations. In our family, each member chooses a new decoration for the tree or the house every year, and this means that we have such an amazing diverse collection of decorations, some of which are so old and full of memories, its so special. In more recent years, we have gained an extension to our house, and have started to get two trees, the second which we get when my sister comes home from uni, normally a week or so later.

The most special decoration in our house is our tree topper. I'm not sure whether I'll really be able to explain this properly, but my father has a little teddy bear called Theodore who he has had for years. And I mean years. The first year that my parents spent Christmas together, they didn't have a lot of money and couldn't afford a lot of decorations, so my mum quickly stitched Theodore a little angels outfit, put some tinsel on his head, and he went on top of the tree. This has happened every year since.Theodore has become the most prized of all decorations and the most anticipated. You cannot imagine the arguments that my sister and I used to get into over who got to dress him each year!

Then, Christmas Eve also has a very strict set of traditions, which are actually being broken this year! Normally we always go to the afternoon service in our church. This is the crib service and is always really nice because its the one that all of the families in the area come to, and they get some of the kids up and dress them up to tell the nativity story. We then go from this service to a local pub which actually holds a very special place in our heart around Christmas time since it's where we stayed when we had a fire. We have a nice drink there, and then head home and start watching National Lampoons Christmas Vacation, the best Christmas movie of all time. We then go to another (different) pub, which serves some amazing food and have dinner and then come home and collapse before my sister and I put out our stockings and the carrots and mince pies for Father Christmas (yes we still do that!). These traditions are being broken this year because my sisters birthday is on the 23rd December and because it was quite a special birthday we went up to London and stayed overnight and only got back a few hours ago.

Christmas Day, here we go. The first thing that always happens every year is me waking up ridiculously early and being to excited to go back to sleep. I normally text all of my friends in the hope of (unsuccessfully) rousing them, before making my parents a cup of tea and waking them up. I would then normally open the things that Father Christmas has put in my stocking (because I'm always a good girl) and then have breakfast. It's about this point that my sister emerges and opens her stocking. We then open everything that's under the tree from friends and family, which takes us most of the morning. My family are quite unusual because we normally have Christmas dinner in the evening and we also have duck instead of turkey because my dad prefers it. We don't have any set traditions for the afternoon, we've done a variety of things in the past. We sometimes go on walks, or organize special Christmas quizzes, or just collapse in front of the TV. In the evening we watch all the Christmas specials that are on TV and then curl up in bed!

This year is a little different in terms of what we're doing because for the first year ever my grandparents and my aunt and uncle are coming to have Christmas with my family and I am so excited! My mum has put me in charge of table decorations which is clearly a very big responsibility while my sister is in charge of entertainment.

I cannot wait for tomorrow and all it will bring. I hope that wherever you are, whatever you're doing, you're having a fantastic time with your family and friends.

Merry Christmas everyone!