Holiday Traditions in Your Home

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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We have a number of them.

Christmas movies - my wife watches some of them as she wraps presents (she insists Die Hard is a Christmas movie), but we always watch the Blackadder Christmas Special together.

Stockings - I converted her to my family’s stance that everyone gets a stocking when we got married. She started wrapping everything in our daughter’s stocking just to slow her down Christmas morning, so now everything in all the stockings is wrapped (we use all the small pieces of leftover wrapping paper).

Gifts - the cats always get their own gifts, wrapped in crinkly paper that will be fun to play with. There’s always a gift or two that Santa must have dropped by mistake, as the tags have to and from names that are totally unknown to us (started as a joke to keep my daughter guessing about the contents - now these are family gifts such as movies that we all like).

We have tourtière for supper Christmas Eve and croissants for breakfast Christmas morning.

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I don’t think that I’ve ever given my cats anything for Christmas…except for some of Christmas Dinner. They are very happy with the turkey or ham or roast beef. And they like the wrapping paper and the ornaments, too.

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Christmas Eve is cartoon version of “The Grinch”, “Emmet Otter”, the Christmas episode of the Andy Griffith show, readings of “A Visit from St. Nick” and at least one of the bible version of Jesus’ birth. Tamales are on the menu along with shrimp, potatoes skins, chips and cookies.

Christmas morning is “shipwreck” (that’s what the Boy Scout troop called it): hash browns, crumbled sausage, eggs and cheese all cooked together.

Now that my sons are grown I relented when asked if they could open one gift on Christmas Eve. I was immediately informed that the tradition is that they ask and I say “No”.

Muppet Christmas Carol is trying to be part of the event (we’ve watched it the last few years) but it isn’t officially part of the line up.